Page 37 of The Sleepwalker

She can hear his heavy footsteps as she hurries back to the bedroom and slams the door so hard that the key jumps out of the lock.

A faint flame is still flickering in the base of the candle.

The belt of Olga’s robe is caught in the door.

Her heart is racing.

She grips the handle with both hands and sees, in the fading light, that the key has landed over a metre away from her.

The flame shrinks, taking on a bluish hue.

There is a soft crackling sound, and the room is plunged into darkness. The powerful scent of wax fills the air.

Olga can hear that Hugo has stopped just outside. He tries the handle, but she manages to hold it steady. His hands move across the door, the tip of the knife scraping against the frame. With her foot, she searches blindly for the key.

Right then, Hugo tugs on the belt of her robe. She sways, still gripping the handle, and feels the heat from the friction as he pulls the belt clean out of the loops holding it in place.

She tries to breathe as quietly as she can, but her hands are clammy and her legs have started to shake.

In the dim city light filtering in through the curtains, she can make out the shapes of her furniture and the dark sheen of the key.

Olga manages to nudge it towards her with her foot, and she takes one hand off the handle and bends down. Just as she reaches the key, Hugo makes another attempt to open the door.She loses her grip and quickly straightens up. Olga throws her weight against the door, pushes the key into the lock and turns it with trembling hands.

Hugo starts muttering to himself, then wanders off down the hallway.

Olga waits for a moment with her ear pressed against the wood. She hears the same scraping sound as earlier, followed by a single thud. After that, nothing.

She grabs her phone from the bedside table and turns on the torch. She then unlocks the door and uses it to illuminate the hallway in front of her as she leaves the bedroom. Following the bloody footprints, she makes her way past the bathroom and through the door into the living room. Hugo is back behind the curtain, and has just managed to open the balcony door. Olga watches as he drops the knife, steps outside and swings one leg over the railing.

* * *

Bernard and Agneta are in their sunroom, drinking tea and eating crispbread with cheese. It is quarter past one in the morning, and the only source of light in the room is a frosted tealight holder on the table.

Agneta is wearing a cardigan over her nightgown, and has removed her makeup and applied night cream to her face, neck and hands. Bernard is in a pair of blue tracksuit bottoms and a faded T-shirt from the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

‘You don’t have to stay up for my sake, you know,’ he tells her for the third time.

‘It’s OK, I want to .?.?. Let’s just drink our tea and try to work out whether there’s anything else we can do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’ve called all of his friends?’

‘Yes.’ Bernard sighs.

‘How can it be that none of them know anything?’

‘I think they were telling the truth. That’s how it felt, anyway .?.?. They said that Hugo has a girlfriend but they’ve never met her, didn’t even know her name.’

‘Maybe he really is in love.’

‘Almost sounds that way.’

Bernard’s hand shakes as he breaks off a piece of crispbread, spreads a thin layer of butter and adds two slices of cheese.

‘I tried to find Olga online,’ says Agneta. ‘But there are too many of them. Thousands. What I said might—’

‘We don’t even know if Olga is her real name.’