Free A Trick of the Mind by Penny Hancock

didn’t they?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And you’ll be OK. We’ll both be OK.’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘See you at the gig later,’ Chiara called over her shoulder as I dropped her at Liam’s house in Tredegar Square, and I went on to our road, a cul-de-sac just past Stepney Green
Tube. Amazingly I found a space just next to our building.
    Chiara was right. I’d be OK. I would focus on the commission for New York. I’d been so preoccupied, I was forgetting the money I’d just made at the gallery. Nearly two thousand
pounds. If I sold any more paintings I could put a deposit down and rent a nicer flat. I’d move to a quieter area, perhaps drop another day’s teaching, spend more time sending out
proposals for commissions. I’d socialise in new circles and might even meet a new man. It was what I’d wanted!
    I dragged my bag from the boot, took Pepper up in one arm. We climbed the steps to the front door. I was met by the fusty smell of a building lived in by many people, and stumbled over the heaps
of junk mail no one bothered to pick up from the slimy floor. Yes, I would definitely move, once Chiara had gone. I wouldn’t be able to afford to live here alone anyway. Chiara had, as usual,
left her domestic mark on our little kitchen with its window overlooking the B&Q car park. Fresh tomatoes and lollo rosso and some interesting-looking cheese in the fridge. Oranges in a bowl.
The flat was just bearable with her homely touches, but I couldn’t imagine living here alone, or sharing it with anyone else.
    This conversion didn’t work. The building had been chopped up into flats so the landlord could make maximum money out of the limited space. The circulation of air was poor, cooking smells
infiltrating the bathroom and the cut-in-half bedrooms, and the sounds from other flats came through badly engineered partition walls.
    I dumped my bag on the shoddy grey carpet and went to listen to the messages on our landline answerphone. There was one from Mum asking me to let her know how the house had seemed this weekend,
whether I’d had further thoughts on selling it. Another message from the suppliers I’d contacted about some canvas and stretchers.
    Then there was one that sent a chill from my toes up through my body to my head. I had to hold on to the bookshelf to steady myself.
    ‘Ellie? This is Patrick. The nurses said you came to visit me. They’ve told me I have amnesia and to get in touch with you as soon as possible. You’re not supposed to use
mobiles but these hospital phones are hell to use, you have to get a card and fiddle about so it’s easier for you to call me. I’m pissed off. They’re saying I’m going to
need major rehabilitation. Call me, will you? It might help, they say, if we can just talk. Here’s my number. Oh and . . . You looked so pretty when I saw you leaving.’
    I slammed the phone down.
    How did he get my number?
    How did he know my name?

CHAPTER NINE
    I stood for several minutes beside the phone in the kitchen, trying to ignore the drip from the ceiling our landlord had failed to fix. A pigeon was preening itself on the
windowsill. One of its feet was deformed, a pink stump where the claws should have been. I looked away. Played the message again.
    Was this a punishment for not going back and checking whether I might have hit someone on the road? A man – a stranger – was stalking me. Stalking? The man in the bed had seemed so
strong, so wealthy, and good-looking, I couldn’t imagine he called people he didn’t know out of need. That glamorous woman on his iPhone showed he was hardly desperate. And anyway, it
was
me
who had gone to see
him.
Stalking was the wrong word. He had phoned me because he believed I was someone he knew.
    I would call Chiara, confess I’d gone as far as visiting the man in hospital, that now he’d rung me thinking I was someone he knew, and we would sit in the pub and have a good laugh
about it. She would tell me to forget it.
    I picked up