It took her a while to realise that she was awake.

Her head pounded, her throat was arid and her vision swam in and out of focus. Gradually, second by second, consciousness set in.

Rachel’s first instinct was to sit up. She couldn’t. She was lying on her left side, and managed with great effort to roll over onto her back, realising as she did so that her left hand was tethered. She had no idea where she was, or why. She only knew that she felt sick, and thirsty, and that her bladder was full.

A door opened and a woman came in. Rachel stared at her, and her heart began to pound as recollection came crashing in. It was Harland Rowe. She was in Harland’s apartment. She had felt ill and passed out.

Harland looked her up and down, but said nothing. She offered a glass of water with a straw in it and Rachel took it with her free right hand and sucked on it desperately. After only a couple of mouthfuls, Harland snatched the glass away.

‘Not too much; you already wet yourself once.’

Rachel looked down at her legs. She was wearing a pair of checked flannel pyjama bottoms. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘I had to put them in the laundry basket.’

‘But my phone—’

‘Broken. It smashed when you passed out.’

They were in the second bedroom. Her legs slithered helplessly across the crimson satin of the bedspread; her left wrist was attached to the metal frame with a stout plastic cable tie. It was fastened tightly, and there were already red wheals on her wrist.

‘Please let me up – I need to use the toilet.’

Harland looked at her steadily, then left the room and reappeared with a disposable cardboard bed pan. She put it into Rachel’s free hand and stood there watching, arms folded, as Rachel awkwardly lowered the pyjamas and pushed it under her hips, silently willing away the sense of furious shame. Feelings like that would only cloud her judgement, and she needed all her focus. Pretend you’re in hospital, she told herself. And this is just a nurse.

When she had finished, Harland removed the bed pan silently and took it away. She did not come back for what felt like a long time, during which Rachel tugged helplessly on her left wrist, searing the skin. If she shouted, perhaps someone would hear.

‘Help!’ Her throat was so dry and sore the sound was no more than a croak. But it did bring Harland back.

‘Nobody’s going to hear you, so don’t waste your energy.’

‘What time is it?’ The watch normally on Rachel’s left wrist had been removed.

‘Nine thirty-five.’

‘In the evening?’ Rachel turned to the window. It was light outside.

‘Morning. It’s Saturday.’

‘I need to get to the airport. I’m supposed to be catching a flight to London this evening. I have to get back by Tuesday.’

Harland shook her head, pouting with mock sadness. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to miss your flight.’

Rachel pushed herself backwards with her free right hand, sliding her buttocks towards the head of the bed so that she was more or less sitting.

‘Look, Harland… I’m not going to report you for wasting police time. It’s not such a big deal, and it’s Kaydance we were really interested in.’ She hoped she could still lie convincingly, despite her throbbing head and racing pulse. ‘Just let me go, and I’ll drive away and we’ll forget this ever happened.’

Harland sat down on the end of the bed. Her calm – nonchalance even – was more disturbing than any aggression. ‘You know why I can’t do that. You know exactly why.’

Rachel shook her head. ‘No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Then let me show you.’ Harland reached into a wicker laundry bin in the corner of the room and pulled out Rachel’s damp jeans. From the left pocket she pulled out a metal P.

Phoebe’s keyring.

She held it up between finger and thumb so that Rachel could see clearly.

‘You see? I know that you know.’

---

At some point Rachel must have slept, because when she opened her eyes, light was fading behind the slatted blind. She was lying awkwardly on her right side, and burning pain shot up and down her manacled left arm. Harland limped in with a tray laid with a pot of fruit yoghurt, a spoon and the water and straw. ‘Nothing too heavy for now, your stomach’s probably still sore.’ With brisk efficiency, she spooned the yoghurt into Rachel’s mouth, then let her drink more water. After the tray was removed, the bed pan routine was repeated.

‘Harland, you know this isn’t going to work. You can’t keep me here like this, someone’s going to come looking for me eventually.’

The green eyes stared back. ‘Really? Are you sure of that?’

She held up something shiny, which Rachel realised was her phone. Then she started hitting buttons and brought up the text messages page, and held it near to Rachel’s face so that she could read it. The most recent message was to Rob – not the ‘Code 3’ that she had sent before being drugged (via the coffee, presumably) but another one. Sent by Harland.

‘You said it was broken!’ Rachel twisted her body and tried to grab it with her right hand, but Harland was too quick.

‘It is now. Oops.’

She held the phone aloft, then brought it smashing down against the metal rail of the bedstead, shattering the screen. For good measure, she dropped it on to the floor, then stamped on it.

‘You can’t hold me here for ever.’ Despite her rising panic, Rachel kept her tone neutral. ‘Someone will work it out and come here.’

‘Oh, I know I can’t.’ There was that cold smile again. ‘But first we need to talk. You want to know how I did this, and I want to tell you.’

‘It’s obvious you can’t have done this alone. So who else was part of it? That’s what I want to know: whose room is this?’

Harland gave her a disdainful look. ‘It’s mine. Who else’s would it be?’

‘But who helped you? There was someone – we have photographic images to prove it. Someone who looked like –’ Rachel decided against using the word ‘victims’ – ‘the girls.’

‘You’re a very good cop. Smart. You must be to have gotten this far. But you’re just not quite smart enough.’ She held up a hand to indicate that Rachel should not speak. ‘It’s okay, we’re going to have a little show and tell.’

She walked to the end of the bed, and waited a couple of seconds to ensure she had Rachel’s full attention. She took off her shoes, then the baggy trousers and shapeless roll neck sweater.

Rachel stared, wordless.

Harland was wearing a padded rubber garment that shrouded her body. It extended down from the neck, over shapeless drooping breasts and rotund belly, to the tops of chubby thighs and flabby arms. Nothing too grotesquely large; just enough bulk to give her a shapeless form. To make her a woman unlikely to turn heads in the street.

‘A prosthetic fat suit,’ she explained needlessly. ‘Pretty commonplace in the movie industry, when characters need to grow smaller or larger as part of their story, or actresses are too vain to gain weight for a heavy role. Or to fake pregnancy, of course.’

She reached behind her head and released a Velcro fastening before lifting off the whole contraption. ‘Always good to get out of it, the damn thing’s heavy.’ She held it up for Rachel to look at more closely before leaning it against the wall. Without the fat suit, Harland was slender and toned, her stomach flat and her naked breasts unnaturally perky. Harland cupped them with pride. ‘Great, aren’t they? The work of a top surgeon.’

She took off her glasses and reached into her mouth, pulling out a dental plate that had been giving her a mild overbite. She smiled broadly at Rachel, showing straight, perfect white teeth. Rachel’s mind raced back to Phoebe’s expensive veneers, bearing witness to her vanity amid her sad skeletal remains. She closed her eyes, unable to utter a word.

‘Open your eyes!’ Harland barked. ‘I’m not done yet.’

Rachel obeyed.

‘Wait there.’ Harland flashed her now pretty teeth in a grin. ‘Like you have a choice.’

Harland went into the walk-in closet and came out wearing black lace lingerie and carrying a box. She placed the box on the bed next to Rachel and indicated she should use her free hand to open it. Rachel jumped out of her skin; her adrenaline-loaded brain seeing a human head.

It was a long blonde wig. Harland was already pushing her short brown hair into a nylon skullcap, then she reverently lifted the wig and stood in front of the dresser mirror, positioning it with the expertise of long practice.

‘This is a custom wig modelled on my own skull measurements and natural hairline. Real hair of course, chosen to be the same texture as my own.’ She picked up a brush and ran it through the honey-coloured locks. ‘Cost six thousand dollars, but worth it, don’t you think? It’s no good wearing a wig that looks like a wig.’

‘Very clever. But I can see what you did,’ Rachel said. ‘So you can stop now.’

The hair looked entirely natural but the face below it somehow did not. It had an odd, foetal appearance; the forehead stretched, cheeks a little too pronounced, lips a little too full. The result of an aesthetician going to work with injectable fillers and toxin, Rachel guessed.

‘Not quite done yet.’ Harland reached into the dresser drawer and took out a long flat box, holding it up so that Rachel could see the contents. Contact lenses in various shades of blue, grey and brown. Of course. Those jade-green eyes of Harland’s were far too distinctive.

‘Brown eyes, that’s what your little English actress had. That’s what brought you over here, wasn’t it? Phoebe?’ She lifted out a pair and with swift, delicate movements inserted them in her eyes. ‘Almost done.’

The next stage was to sit herself at the dressing table and get to work with her make-up, applying it with the zest and proficiency of an expert. Light-reflecting primer, foundation skilfully blended with a brush and set with powder. Then shimmering highlighter, three different shadows to create a smoky eye, eyebrow pencil to create perfect arches, eyeliner and false lashes, peachy blusher and finally the Tangier Nights lipstick.

‘Harland!’ Rachel’s voice emerged as a croak.

She held a finger to her lips. ‘Wait. Almost done.’ She went back into the closet for a few minutes. When she emerged, she was wearing a short red dress and high-heeled sandals. It was, definitively, the girl in the shampoo commercial.

‘What do you think?’ Harland asked rhetorically.

That you’re beautiful, Rachel decided. It was an artificial, contrived beauty; a beauty that worked on camera but would always look slightly strange in the flesh. And then it came to her. She knew who she had been reminded of at their first meeting: Bette Davis as the plain Charlotte Vale in Now, Voyager. The reveal of the formerly frumpy Charlotte as a poised swan of a woman with a lush mouth and huge eyes was a moment of immense cinematic power, yet it was the image of Davis’s downtrodden spinster with her dowdy bun and thick spectacles that had triggered something at the back of Rachel’s mind when she first saw Harland.

The swan incarnation twisted and turned in front of the mirror, her movements graceful. Rachel remembered something.

‘What about your limp?’

‘Oh, that’s simple.’ Harland sashayed over to her orthopaedic shoes and held one out to Rachel. On the inside a nail was just visible sticking out of the inner sole. ‘Having that stuck in your foot all day long will make you limp, no problem at all.’

Harland put the shoe down again and struck a pose, waiting. She clearly wanted endorsement, praise.

Rachel reached her free hand over to the pinioned one and clapped slowly. ‘Quite something,’ Rachel told her. ‘A real piece of work. Literally.’

Harland couldn’t keep herself from smiling.

‘But at what cost, Harland, for Christ’s sake? What fucking cost?’

‘Well, let’s see now…’ she started to count on her fingers. ‘Rhinoplasty: six thousand dollars. Breast augmentation: ten thousand dollars. Liposculpting: five thousand dollars. The wig: six thousand dollars—’

‘I meant what about the human cost of what you’ve done, you deluded woman! The suffering. The unbearable grief.’

Harland’s eyes narrowed, and Rachel wondered if she had pushed her too far. But all she said was: ‘I have to go out.’

Rachel was forced to watch as Harland took off the dress, heels and underwear, tossed the wig onto the bed and climbed back into her fat suit, fat clothes and ugly shoes. It was impossible not to be appalled, but also fascinated. The lenses and eyelashes were removed, the make-up wiped off and the glasses and dental flipper replaced.

‘All righty then,’ said plain Harland, more amiably. ‘I won’t be long. You try and get some rest.’

Rachel fought sleep as hard as she could, desperately trying to free her left arm, but the residual drugs in her system and the after-effects of shock overcame her once more and she fell asleep, the blonde wig lying on her right foot.

---

When Harland returned, it was dark again.

‘I guess your flight will be taking off right about now,’ she observed.

To react would be a waste of what little energy Rachel had left, so she pretended not to hear. Harland seemed cheerful, buoyed up by the earlier enactment of butterfly emerging from the prosthetic chrysalis.

‘I’ve brought you some English muffins,’ she said, after positioning and then removing another cardboard bedpan. ‘I thought you might like those. And I’ve made tea. I know you British love your tea.’

She held out a plate of buttered muffins, and Rachel managed to take one with her free hand and make a decent job of feeding herself.

‘I’m not going to let you hold the tea cup in case you spill it; the angle you’re at.’ She said this as though it were Rachel’s fault she was in a semi-reclining position. Tied to a serial killer’s bed.

The cup was lifted to her lips but was too scaldingly hot to sip. ‘Can you let it cool down a little?’ she pleaded.

‘Well, all right.’ Harland placed the cup on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Now that you’re comfortable, we can have a proper talk. I’m going to tell you a little bit more about me.’