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EIGHT WEEKS BEFORE THAT THURSDAY

Lilah

Lilah stood behind the issue desk of the library, unaware that soon, she would have the single most horrific experience of her life.

She surveyed the five stacks of books that she had spent her afternoon compiling. One for fiction, one for plays, one for crime, a short one for poetry, and a counterintuitively tall one for children. The book sets for every single library reading group. Not a single copy missing, and every set containing something from the top five priority list.

There were going to be a lot of very happy readers this month. Which partly made up for the conversation she’d overheard in the break room this morning. Well, it wasn’t exactly a conversation: Jimiyu had thanked Lilah for closing up for him tonight, and Alice had muttered to herself, which was supposed to be under her breath, but had clearly been loud enough for everyone to hear, especially as there were only three of them in the break room.

“Why is she still working here when some of us need the money? Did she win the lottery or not?”

This wasn’t the first time that Alice had said something like that about Lilah. She was always dropping little passive-aggressive barbs that were supposed to be jokes, like “Going home to your yacht?” or “Don’t forget your Chanel bag!” Lilah didn’t have a yacht and wouldn’t know what to do with a Chanel bag, unless it was a Chanel fanny pack, but why would you spend that much on a fanny pack when one from Primark held everything you could need?

When Alice said things like that, Lilah would laugh nervously. But privately she had started calling her “Evil Alice.” Only in her own head, of course.

The question this morning couldn’t even remotely be interpreted as a joke. Lilah had ducked out of the break room, her heart hammering. But she’d been rehearsing answers to that question for the rest of the afternoon, even though she’d never have the courage to say them aloud.

Making up the book group stacks was one of the reasons why she still chose to work here, even though she had won the lottery and technically, she didn’t need to work at all.

Plus, Lilah loved her job. Ever since she was a little girl, sitting on her dad’s knee listening to him read stories, she’d wanted to work around books. Initially she’d wanted to be a writer, but what had happened at university had ruined that for her. Being a librarian was just as good, though. Every single book contained an entire world. If you put them together, you got the sum of human knowledge. Reading books, finding them, recommending them, putting them in order, sharing them, taking care of them...what more could you ask out of life?

Lilah Nightingale knew she would never achieve anything great—she would never cure cancer, or stop climate change, or write a bestselling novel, or pen a single line of poetry that moved someone’s heart—but whenever she touched a book, she touched greatness.

She’d never give that up.

“I’m going now,” said Jimiyu, emerging from the back with his coat and bag. “Thanks for closing up for me.”

“It’s my pleasure,” said Lilah, smiling. “I hope your daughter’s concert goes well. I’ll see you Tuesday.”

The library was closed on Mondays now. Funding issues. They always used to have Rhyme Time in the Children’s section on a Monday morning, and even though it was moved to Wednesdays, she thought that Mondays had been better attended.

In her opinion, it was a crying shame not to have the library open seven days a week. Knowledge should be free to everyone. It wasn’t just books, either. People used the computers for all sorts—research, paying their bills, applying for jobs or benefits or asylum. Some people came in purely for the warmth and light and shelter. Or not to be alone. You could never be lonely in a library.

Zachary loved the library almost as much as she did. They’d met here, after all—and in a reading group, no less. The inaugural meeting of the play-reading group, when they were reading An Inspector Calls , which Lilah had chosen because it was always good to attract people with a classic. There weren’t enough people for all the parts, so Lilah had had to step in. She read Sheila. The Inspector was read by the soft-spoken gentleman in the gold-rimmed glasses, who looked like a professor, with his tweed jacket and well-scuffed brogues. He had a surprisingly powerful and eloquent voice, and once, while they were reading together—the scene where Sheila finds out about Gerald’s secret—Lilah looked up from her playbook at the exact same time that the gentleman playing the Inspector looked up from his.

Their eyes met, and she felt a jolt of electricity all the way down her body, like the time she’d plugged the kettle into an outlet that wasn’t properly grounded.

And then the rest was history. She twisted her engagement ring around her finger. It still felt strange there, and much bigger than she would have chosen herself. Evil Alice stared at it every time they were in the same room together.

She patted the play-reading group book stack affectionately, then picked up Jimiyu’s keys, ready to do a final sweep of the library to make sure everything was in order and ready for closing. An elderly gentleman was still on the computers; Lilah said a quiet word to him reminding about closing time, and then she went to check the children’s section, which got left in a bit of a mess sometimes. She was approaching the picture book bins when she saw Evil Alice coming her way, wearing a sour expression.

Lilah ducked behind a shelf of Young Adult literature. She pretended to be looking for a book, but thank goodness, Evil Alice didn’t notice her and carried on past towards the break room, presumably to collect her coat and bag to go home.

This wasn’t the first time she’d hidden from Evil Alice. She did it all the time. And she knew it was cowardly, like it was mean for her to call her Evil Alice, even to herself. Evil Alice probably had a lot of sadness in her life to act that way. Or maybe she had a lot of outstanding bills. Though Evil Alice didn’t tell anyone about it so they could help her, or offer to loan her money; she just aggressively shushed everyone and ate all the biscuits.

Lilah heard the front door shut and scurried over to look through the glass: Alice had left. She was alone. She locked the door and drew a sigh of relief.

Lilah finished up her rounds, tidying shelves and straightening papers, shutting down computers. She loved this too: having the library all to herself. All those quiet shelves and dark screens, all the safe and comforting shadows. When she was finished, she turned off the final light, then unlocked the front door, let herself out, and locked it behind her. She put Jimiyu’s keys carefully in her bag and patted them, as if to tell them to stay safe. Then, before she walked to her bus stop, she took a moment to gaze at the library where she’d spent so many happy hours as a child and young woman. Its brick walls, its dark windows. Its book-return slot by the front door. The posters on the glass doors advertising community coffee mornings, book clubs, citizens’ advice clinics, and of course, Rhyme Time.

Lilah did good work here, in a place she loved. And now, after a satisfying day, she would go home to Dad, who would greet her with his usual hug. He’d been gardening today, and he’d smell of fresh soil and woodchips. They’d watch Midsomer Murders together on the couch. He’d have his supper on a tray, and she’d keep him company even though she wasn’t eating, because she loved spending time with her dad, and she worried that he got lonely when she was out at work all day, even though now that he’d retired he kept busy with his hobbies.

And then she’d have a quick bath and put on a dress, because Zachary was taking her out for a romantic dinner later. It wasn’t a special occasion; Zachary said it was nice sometimes to do special things even on Sunday evenings.

She was the luckiest person in the world.

* * *

Her commute from work to home took quite a bit longer these days than it had when she and her father had lived in the bungalow, but she couldn’t complain. It gave her time to listen to audiobooks, and besides, it was always a thrill to get off the bus and walk to their brand-new house, with its picture windows and its glossy door with a brass knocker and its huge garden for Dad.

Dad even wanted to try his hand at topiary. “What do you think of a fox and a hare?” he’d asked the other night, and Lilah agreed that it would be wonderful to have a fox and a hare made of bushes in their front garden, like two characters from an Aesop fable about to come to life. Though Dad thought maybe he’d start with something smaller, like a chicken.

If someone had told her when she was a little girl that one day she would live in a house like this—an actual mansion—and that her dad would be able to retire a year early from his post office job, which was a job he loved though it hadn’t been easy these last few years with his bad knees, or that she herself would have her dream job and her dream boyfriend and one day soon, maybe a cat...well, she wouldn’t have believed them.

It was enough to make her believe in destiny.

She went up to her front door, started to put the key in the lock, and realized that it was slightly ajar.

Dad was usually quite cautious—he’d seen too many packages stolen from front steps in their old neighborhood—but he also was a little forgetful sometimes. She figured it was because they were in a new place, after he’d lived most of his life in the bungalow. The neighborhood here in Chislehurst, on a private road near the golf course, was quieter than their old place in Sidcup. It took some adjusting. And he did do his word puzzles and Sudoku every day, and she made sure they included plenty of oily fish in their diet, but nevertheless she was frowning when she walked into the hallway and called out, “Dad? You left the door open.”

Her voice echoed slightly against the marble tiles. Dad didn’t answer.

He might be in the back garden, or in the kitchen, or upstairs. It was difficult to hear people in this house because it was so big. Last week she’d had to resort to calling Dad’s cellphone when she couldn’t find him. He was in the bath, but not in his own bathroom. He’d just wanted to try out one of the other ones.

She closed the door, left her keys in the little bowl, and went through the house to the open-plan kitchen, which was all marble and granite and stainless steel, with an enormous new Aga stove that she hadn’t quite figured out how to use yet. The room was empty and the back doors to the patio were open. Glass crunched underfoot.

One of the panes of the patio doors had been broken from the outside.

“Dad?” she called again.

She looked around the garden. He’d been working out here—his edge cutter and spade were leaning neatly against a low wall, and one of the beds had been mulched—but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and not in the shed or greenhouse either.

When she went back into the kitchen, she noticed that several of the drawers were open. Frowning, she shut them. It wasn’t like Dad to be untidy.

She glanced into the room that the estate agent had called the “family room.” It adjoined the kitchen so you could chat with whoever was sitting there while you cooked dinner. She stifled a scream.

It was a mess. Lamps overturned, sofa cushions thrown to the floor. The television, mounted on the wall, was half off its brackets and hung at a precarious angle.

Something terrible had happened. She could feel it like hands around her neck.

“Dad!” she shouted.

She ran upstairs, terror pounding in her ears. She ran past bedrooms with open doors, barely noticing that each one of those rooms had also been ransacked. Clothes on the carpets, blankets trailing, electronics ripped from the walls. The door to her father’s study was open too: a large room at the back of the house, south facing for the natural light.

A great deal of the room was taken up by his model train setup. It was magical, that land he’d built on large sheets of plywood, propped up on tables, with little people, shops, trees, several intricately painted steam locomotives, even cows in the fields and dogs running in the park. As a child she’d watched it for hours, and played with it, though only under his supervision. She still helped him with it sometimes.

It had been upended. The trains lay in a jumble on the floor. People, shops, animals, all of them to scale. The tracks clung to the fake grass, perfect and empty. A bottle of model paint had smashed, filling the air with a chemical scent.

Her father was lying facedown on the floor beside the ruins of his trains.

He was still wearing the clothes she’d seen him in this morning before she’d gone to work: dun-colored corduroys, a white shirt with a subtle check, the sleeves rolled up. It was all stained with blood. Bright red on the collar of his shirt. He lay in a puddle of it, a flood of it. It mixed with the green of the enamel paint.

“Dad!” She fell to her knees beside him. The blood was still warm. The skin of his neck was lukewarm when she touched it. The back of his head, where the hair was thinning (she always told him it wasn’t) was covered in blood, so much of it that it looked black.

His head was the wrong shape.

“Dad,” she sobbed.

She shook him gently. She tried to wake him. She took his limp hand and wound her fingers around his. She kissed his knuckles.

She kept saying his name, even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good.