Adam nods, pressing his lips together. He’s not sure he can talk.

  ‘What for?’ she asks, her voice full of dread.

  Adam takes a deep breath, looks around for strength, barely able to bring himself to say the words. ‘Inappropriate texts – and photos – have been sent from my phone to… a female teenage patient of mine. I don’t know which one. All I know is that I didn’t send them. Of course I bloody didn’t. I would never do anything like that. Just like I’d never cheat on you. Not in a million years. You know that?’ Tears start to well up in Adam’s eyes as Tania looks at him blankly. ‘Don’t you, Tania? You must believe me. If you don’t believe me…’

  Tania says nothing. Instead she walks over to Adam and wraps him in a tired hug. They stay like that for a long while.

  ‘Who’s doing this to us?’ she eventually asks, still holding him.

  His face is pressed against Tania’s shoulder, close to Tilly, their beautiful, sleep-defying daughter. He knows the answer, knows who is doing this to them. And he needs to be strong.

  ‘I love you, Tania,’ he says. ‘I love our family, Tilly and Freddie. I would never do anything to lose what we’ve got together, the life we have. I know it’s not easy right now for you. I get that. And we’ll sort it, I promise. But you must believe me. You must trust me.’

  ‘I do,’ Tania whispers, her own eyes wet with tears too now. ‘You’re a shambles – overweight, a little too comfortable with me being a stay-at-home mum, and you fart like a hippo in bed – but you’re not a… I know you didn’t send the texts.’

  ‘Thank you. You fart too, by the way.’

  ‘Don’t wake our angel,’ she adds, looking over her shoulder at Tilly.

  ‘Sorry.’ He feels stronger now. ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he says, glancing at the security cameras. ‘Something I should have told you when we first met, but I never did. And that was a mistake. An unforgivable mistake.’

  ‘Is it about Clio?’ she asks.

  Her question takes him by surprise. Is that why Tania was so convinced that something went on between them at their house?

  ‘No. Not about Clio. It’s about a friend of hers. A former friend.’ He takes a breath. ‘You know that film I showed you – highlights of my time at Cambridge?’

  She nods. He played it for her when they were very drunk once, soon after they started dating. He’d been trying to impress and nearly told her the truth, but even his beer-sodden brain had balked at the idea.

  ‘There’s another version – with a different ending,’ he says. ‘Very different.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He can hear the anxiety rising in her voice.

  ‘The person who made it was this guy called Louis. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned him before.’ Adam’s being disingenuous. He knows he hasn’t mentioned him. He’s never wanted Louis, not even his name, to be anywhere near Tania, to contaminate the air between them, their life together. ‘I came to an arrangement with him that the other version would never be shown to anyone.’

  ‘You’re scaring me, Adam.’

  ‘I’m scaring myself.’

  ‘What sort of “arrangement”? What other ending?’

  There’s no turning back now. There are some secrets so dark that it’s not an act of love to share them. They contaminate the confidant, implicate them in the crimes of the confessor. But it’s time to tell Tania. She knows that Adam was present at a party at Cambridge where a student died, is aware that he gave evidence at the inquest. He told her early in their relationship. Told Crispin too, who was none too impressed. Medics drank like sailors in his day, but they never took drugs. Another of the many reasons why he distrusts Adam. But he’s not told Tania the full story, what Louis filmed that night at the party.

  All this time he’s kept his silence, fearful of what Louis might do, where he might post the video, the damage it would cause to his career. To his marriage. To his life. But now the twenty-four years is up and Adam is frightened. For too long he’s been in denial about the play’s ending. Marlowe pointedly refused to grant Faustus forgiveness, let him repent, even though Faustus realised, too late, the error of his ways. There was no last-minute let-off. No exit clause in the contract he’d signed with his own blood. He was dragged down to hell by demons, kicking and screaming, condemned to eternal damnation.

  This is the time.

  41

  May 1998

  I entered Louis’ room full of dread. I’d gone to his house because I suspected the film of Aldous having sex might have been recorded covertly in Louis’ bathroom. But Louis had turned the tables and was about to show me how Lecter – Brandon – had really died. What did Louis know that he wasn’t telling me? I wished Ji was in there with me, but he was still keeping guard on the street outside.

  Louis’ room was like a shrine to cinema. Thick, dark red velvet curtains half drawn, an anglepoise on his desk spilling an insipid pool of light. Film posters adorned every wall. Cameras old and new lined the bookshelves: camcorders jostling with Brownies in battered leather cases and Rolleiflexes. Propped up on the mantelpiece was an old clapperboard for Angel Heart, complete with shooting date (11.06.86) and director (Alan Parker). Beside it, a well-thumbed paperback of Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg. And in the far corner, blocking what little light there was from the bay window, a vintage cinema projector, two metres tall, hunched like a stooping figure.

  There was no evidence of Louis packing up, of leaving. Perhaps he hadn’t been suspended after all. If the police were focused on the drug dealer, Louis might already be in the clear. But I wasn’t thinking about him. What concerned me was the large TV screen attached to the wall. And the film that had started to play.

  ‘It’s not a final edit, but I thought you’d like to see it,’ Louis said.

  His tone was back to how it used to be, friendly, genial, but I wasn’t falling for that. Not after our exchange upstairs in the bathroom. He hadn’t been troubled by any of my accusations, which made me nervous. I’d shown him all my cards. What hand was he about to play? I watched the film, chest tight as a vice: me in my room, cycling to lectures, having lunch with Clio, punting to Grantchester. Of course he’d secretly filmed us. And then I was at the party, talking to Clio. So far, so innocent. Just like the film of Aldous’s student life.

  I glanced across at Louis, who was watching the footage unmoved, a rollie at his lips. What was he playing at? I could barely breathe. I’d just accused him of blackmailing Aldous, of possibly causing his death, and here he was showing me a jolly little film about my dull student life. And then the tone changed as I saw myself hauling Lecter up the stairs. He put up much more resistance than I remembered and it wasn’t a pretty sight. I winced. It was like a wildlife programme, a lion dragging a stricken animal to its den. But it was nothing compared to what followed.

  I watched, aghast, as I pushed Lecter across the bathroom. I was right: there was a wide-angle camera in the shower, to judge from where the footage had been filmed. The quality wasn’t great – grainy, badly lit, on a par with the sex scene with Aldous – but my actions were clear enough. And the terror on Lecter’s face was palpable as he stumbled backwards. Towards the open window. A second later, he’d fallen. Dropped out of sight. Disappeared. The curtain billowed and I was through the bathroom door, locking it behind me.

  My whole body froze. I needed to get away from there, away from Louis.

  ‘I didn’t push him out the window,’ I whispered, desperately trying to recall the exact sequence of events.

  The curtain billowed again on the screen, accompanied by sinister music, which didn’t help. I’d pushed Lecter backwards and then caught him, settled him down against the wall. I was sure of it. And then I’d lifted him up by his lapels and shoved him again when he’d become abusive, rude about Clio. You don’t have to ask, you know. Not with her. But I’d stopped well short of the window, hadn’t I? Checked myself. Turned and left him there. Walked away.

  ‘I am not a violent man,’ I said, as much as to myself as to Louis.

  My brain continued to spin like a dervish. I would know if I’d killed a man. Wouldn’t I? I would have risen this morning plagued with guilt of a whole different order, felt it in my bones, in the very marrow. You would just know, however drunk you might have been, if you were responsible for having taken another human being’s life? I was shocked and sorry for Lecter’s death, of course I was. And I was worried that I might have been involved in some tangential way – the missing pill, locking the bathroom door – but that was it. This film, though… this film suggested otherwise. I should never have agreed to it. But I wasn’t just guilty of naivety. I was guilty of murder.

  The footage cut to the mayhem of downstairs, the screams as everyone ran inside from the courtyard. How long had passed between my exit from the bathroom and Lecter’s body smacking into the speakers? There’d been an interval, I was sure of it, as I made my way down two flights of stairs, but not in this film. And now I was watching a shot, taken from above, a high window, of Lecter’s twisted, distorted body, his eyes staring up into the night sky. The film faded to black.

  We both stood there in silence as the credits rolled.

  ‘I might change the typeface,’ Louis eventually said, walking away from the screen into the middle of the room. ‘Maybe sans serif?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On the credits.’

  I glanced at the screen. I couldn’t care less about the fucking typeface. ‘I didn’t push him,’ I said. ‘I swear I didn’t. I’m not that sort of person.’

  I sounded desperate, pathetic. The protests of a guilty man.

  Louis tilted his head to one side in consideration. ‘Someone watching that might decide otherwise,’ he said, nodding at the screen. ‘It looked pretty conclusive to me. I haven’t shown it to the police,’ he added. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ I asked. ‘What’s this all about? This whole A Life in the Day of… charade? You held a party for Aldous and then you invited me here to another party last night. Did you know Lecter was going to—’

  ‘Be pushed out of a second-storey window by a mild-mannered medic like you?’ he interrupted, laughing. ‘No, I didn’t. It was a surprising turn of events.’ His eyes were fixed on mine. Was he lying? Had he assumed that I’d get riled up by Lecter? ‘An unexpected bonus.’

  ‘A bonus? Jesus, Louis, a man’s died.’

  ‘A tragedy, of course it was. For both of you. But it opened up… other possibilities. A chance to upgrade.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. Who was this man? I also couldn’t shake off the feeling he was holding something back.

  ‘What had you been expecting?’ I asked. ‘That you’d take me upstairs and I’d snort some coke on camera – was that it? Just like you lured Aldous up there. How did you manage to arrange that, by the way? Got the other guy into the bathroom first, said that Aldous was into him – once you’d made sure Grace was too drunk to notice? She’s distraught, by the way. Utterly devastated. Her life is over, destroyed. What kind of a monster are you?’

  Louis laughed again and I turned away in disgust, glancing at the posters around the walls. I had already clocked Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart in the corner, but I’d not taken too much notice of the others. Now they struck me, their common theme: Rosemary’s Baby; The Witches of Eastwick; Prince of Darkness; The Day of the Beast; The Prophecy; The Omen.

  The aesthetics of evil in modern cinema.

  ‘I’m not a monster,’ he said. ‘Aldous’s death had nothing to do with me. He was a conflicted, troubled soul with a secret he couldn’t have kept from Grace forever. He killed himself because he wasn’t prepared to live the life he was meant to lead. I like to think that my films invoke a higher truth.’

  I was out of words, spent. I no longer knew how to respond, what to do, in the presence of this man’s malevolence. I’d never met someone like him before. He’s not just a bad person. He’s evil. Was I now no better than him?

  ‘It’s money, isn’t it?’ I asked quietly. It’s easy to forget that Louis has been cut off by his parents. Nothing about his student lifestyle suggests poverty. ‘That’s what you want. That’s what you asked Aldous for, on the eve of his job interview, knowing what a dim view the big law firms would make of the video. And when he couldn’t pay, you posted it.’

  It was a while before Louis replied. When he did, his tone was strangely reflective.

  ‘You’re right – I was going to ask you for money. Taking class A drugs on camera wouldn’t have done your prospects as a medic any good. A police caution can really change the tone of a CV. It’s the same for student lawyers, teachers, accountants. They all usually pay up. Can’t afford to ruin their careers before they’ve even begun. For the record, I think it was his love for Grace rather than a good job offer that made Aldous jump. He couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing the video of him with someone else. Touching, really. I assumed he would pay up, but he chose a different route.’ Louis smirked. ‘Events took an unexpected turn with you too. And now I want something else. Something more valuable than money. Less nugatory. More ambitious.’

  I had no desire to know what he wanted. Instead, I went on the attack. ‘What’s to stop me walking out of here right now and into the nearest police station?’ I said. ‘Telling them what you did to Aldous, how you blackmailed him, what you did to me and all the others?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ he said, gesturing as if to usher me out of the door. ‘There’s no proof that I filmed Aldous and his friend. Or asked him for money. He’s the only one who knew and he’s… no longer with us, sadly. As for the others, they can’t afford to say anything. They wouldn’t be so stupid. They know what I’d do. That’s how these things tend to work. As for proof of my involvement with you, all you have is a film.’ He nodded at the screen. ‘Unfortunately, a film that says more about you than me. I’m sure the police would be delighted to talk to you.’

  I closed my eyes, biting back a sudden wave of emotion. In my heart, in my soul, I was sure that I hadn’t killed Lecter. But what if I was wrong? What if alcohol had redacted my memories, blacked out the crucial moments? What if, God forbid, I had pushed him out of the window? Already the idea had lost some of its absurdity. My medical career would definitely be over, just as Louis said. Mum would never survive the shock. And I would be a murderer, condemned to a lifetime of remorse, torn apart by guilt for having taken a person’s life.

  ‘So what do you want?’ I asked.

  42

  May 1998

  Louis paused before answering my question, wandering around his room like a don lost in thought. He picked up a framed photo from the mantelpiece. I hadn’t noticed it before. Two young boys in shorts, squinting in the sunshine.

  ‘You’re an only child, aren’t you?’ Louis said.

  I managed a nod. Jesus, how did he know so much about me?

  ‘It does something to a person. Seems to give them a particularly intense relationship with their parents, wouldn’t you say? I mean, look at Clio.’ Louis raised his eyebrows, let his words settle.

  ‘Gabe made my childhood bearable – and he would have enjoyed last night,’ he continued, placing the photo back on the mantelpiece. I assumed it was of him and Gabe. ‘He used to be a massive cinema fan, but he’s lost all interest in films now. Back in the day, he’d have come dressed as Charlie Chaplin. We used to make films together when we were younger, on holiday in Cornwall. Tried to re-create scenes from our favourite Chaplin films. Modern Times cracked us up every time. He could do that funny thing with the spanners and the ears perfectly. You know it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘He was quite the comic, a born actor, always clowning around. Made me cry with laughter. Not so much now.’

  ‘What do you want?’ I repeated, no longer interested in his brother’s depression. I couldn’t get the footage he’d just shown me out of my head.

  ‘What do I want? That’s an interesting question. When you make a film of someone’s life, you try to convey the essence of that person – to capture their soul, as some cultures believe,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d done that with you – until last night, when you revealed a very different Adam.’

  I tried to interrupt, to protest my innocence again, but he held up his hand to silence me and I obeyed. Why didn’t I ignore him? Was a voice in my head already telling me that I had another side? A darker, violent Adam?

  ‘So all I want, in return for not doing anything with this film, for not handing it over to the police, for not posting it on the World Wide Web, is the opportunity to have another go at capturing your soul, to make another one.’

  ‘Another film?’ I didn’t understand.

  He nodded. ‘But not now. One day in the future. When you’ve established your medical career, become the good doctor that you dream of being. A dream that would be shattered if the truth about last night’s death were ever to be made public.’

  Another shiver of fear ran through me. I tried to focus on Louis’ offer, rather than last night’s events, but he still wasn’t making any sense. From where I was standing, a second film seemed a small price to pay compared with what he must have asked Aldous to cough up. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t have got anywhere if he’d demanded money from me. I’ve barely enough to live on.

  ‘And when do you envisage making this other film?’ I asked, feeling strangely better already.

  He turned to me. ‘Twenty-four years from now has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Twenty-four?’ I asked, but I already knew why. I’d said it enough times on stage. For the vain pleasure of four and twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity.

  And just as it was for Doctor Faustus, it seemed too far ahead to be of any concern to me right then. I mean, where would we both be in twenty-four years? Louis might be dead, to judge by his sickly demeanour and smoking habit. I could be too, for all I knew. Run over by a bus. But if we were both still alive, what harm would it do to have another film made of my life? It might be more interesting by then. My career would have had a chance to flourish. Louis’ too. He could be a famous director. Even if he was, I would be more assertive next time, make it very clear what I did and didn’t want to be filmed. No parties, for a start. And definitely no hidden cameras. It all seemed faintly ridiculous, a pretentious student artifice. In short, it was a massive let-off.