Free Under the Harrow: by Flynn Berry

left a key under the mat, he could have let himself in when she was at work or asleep. I try not to think of it. I can’t decide if I would feel safer with the front door locked or unlocked.
    I switch on a lamp and the kitchen glows faintly, with the drizzle at the windows. The round wooden table near the entryway, the rag rug, the oven across the room. A thick bunch of parsley stands in a glass of water by the sink. On the shelf above it is a package of pasta striped pink and green, shaped like tricorner hats. Rachel had an alert on tickets to Rome, and I imagine the travel deals still filing into her in-box, unread messages ticking in one by one.
    I open the cupboards, which smell, as they always have, faintly of incense, and stare at the boxes of tea, bags of lentils, flour, the jars of sherbet lemons and wine gums and licorice ropes. A few weeks ago, we came back from the cinema and she walked to the counter, where the jar of licorice stood empty.
    “Was this you?” she asked.
    “Oh, sorry,” I said. She hadn’t even taken off her coat, she walked straight to the counter and pointed at the jar with her gloved hand. I can’t remember if she sounded scared, or just annoyed at me for finishing it. It was a strange way to phrase it, I realize now. Who else could it have been?
    As I leave the kitchen, I stumble. My hearing tunnels, then disappears, and my vision breaks into spots like pixels. I lean my forehead on the counter until I can hear the wind gusting around the house again, and the slush of a car driving by, and myself sighing.
    I am going up the stairs, and then for a long time I am staring at her handprint on the steps. I can see the notches in her fingers and the three deep lines across her palm.
    I hold on to the banister, then tip forward onto the step. I crawl up the stairs and the corridor stretches dim and empty in front of me. Past the open doors, the other rooms are bathed in pale light. I press myself flat to the floor where I last sawher. I don’t think I’ll be able to get up again. I think of her socked feet.
     • • • 
    Her bedroom still smells like her. Across the valley, the red light on the radio tower has a foggy halo. The radiators hiss steam into the room.
    Her desk has two filing cabinets underneath it, and I start to sort through the papers. Someone may have written to her. She was clever. If she knew she was being stalked, she would keep a record of it.
    Stacks of bureaucratic papers, from the hospital, from the bank, from the purchase of her home. Old letters, recipes, lists of projects around the house. It takes a long time to go through all of it, and I find nothing, no mention of Keith, or someone named Martin, no suspicious notes or letters.
    In the bathroom there is a jar of olive oil and sea salt. My heart lurches. It seems an impossible thing for her to have done. Who has the time? Though it doesn’t take any, of course, pouring a thick cup of olive oil and stirring in the salt. The jar is the same brown as the bottle of hydrogen peroxide next to it, which she used on cuts and to dry the water in her ears after swimming.
    She was moving to Cornwall, five hours away. I wonder if that would have been far enough. It felt safe, though. All those small villages. The walls of trees. Smugglers hid there for centuries. St. Ives is large, too, she could blend in.
    At the Chinese restaurant, I asked Lewis why it would take the man who attacked her in Snaith so long to find her. “He might not have known her name,” he said.
    I wonder if Rachel thought she was about to lurch out of the house, call for help, survive. If as she died, she was thinking, On the count of three—
    There are two full suitcases in the boot of her car. She had started to pack for Cornwall.

17
    I WAS ON the cliff path in Polperro. There were beach roses. I was hauling groceries to our house. Bottles of tonic, cherries, potatoes, spinach, crisps, lemons, and a dozen channel scallops. The shop in town sold