5.3

 He held up his hands in a show of defeat. "I don't know what game you're trying to play here, but I'd rather not be part of it. You're off your meds or something. I haven't got a sculpture of you. I haven't been carving stone since you arrived and I certainly haven't been lying to you. I have never set eyes on you before you knocked on the door." He drew his hands together in a prayer-like beg. "All I want is for you to stop the banging at night. I've got another full day starting at six tomorrow and I'd really like to get a few hours sleep before them. Will you please act like a responsible adult and let me and the rest of the street get some rest?"

Roisin could feel tears pricking at the back of her eyes. "You're lying right now. I've seen the sculpture in your room and it's not an angel at all." Her lips hardened as she fought to bite back the sobs of frustration. "All I want to do is get on with my life. Why does everybody treat me like a piece of shit on the shoe?"

"I'm not treating you like anything." Paul took a deep breath and was visibly counting before he let it out again. "Look. If I show you the sculpture can we all get some rest for the night? I can help you find someone to talk to tomorrow, okay?"

"All right. "She crossed her arms. "Get the bloody stone and we'll see which of us is lying."

Paul glanced at his wrist, but wasn't actually wearing a watch. He gave a huff of annoyance, turned and went back into his room. He went out of view for a moment then she watched as he pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves and picked up the block of stone, cradling it to his chest and leaning slightly backwards as he carried it toward her. "See? Bas relief of an angel."

"Why are you gaslighting me over this?" Her face creased in anger as she all but spat the words. "That's a sculpture of me, moving between who I was, who I am and who I might be if I don't fucking kill myself first."

"I don't understand." Paul lifted one knee and braced it against the doorpost, then rested the block of stone partly on his horizontal thigh, the better to twist it through one-eighty and view it himself. "What the fuck are you on about. It's an angel with a trumpet, just as I said."

"It really isn't." She scowled. "Unless you think I look like an angel, and I bloody know that's not true. How can you stand there and deny it?" She turned and grabbed her phone from where it was charging by her bed. "I've got proof."

"Okay." He turned away from her. "Look, I have to put this down before I drop it." The way he staggered back to his room would indicate the block was twice as heavy as it was before. He put it back on its pedestal and came back toward her room, peeling off his cotton gloves on the way. "Show us these photos, then."

She logged into her phone and pulled open her gallery, flicking past the half-dozen photographs she'd taken of the two painted sketches she'd spent time on today. When she reached the series she'd taken of the stone block, her face fell. "Wait. This isn't right."

"What isn't? Did you take photos of my underwear drawer or something?"

"These aren't the photos I took." She looked up, her eyes narrowed. "Have you been messing with my phone?"

"I haven't touched your fucking phone. I haven't even come into your room. Unlike some people, I actually have integrity."

"Yeah. Right." Roisin scrolled through all the pictures she taken sing she arrived in Wolverhampton, but the only ones of the stone block in Paul's room showed exactly what he said it showed: A bas-relief of a post-medieval angel blowing a trumpet. Even the video of the cycle of figures showed nothing but the angel with a slight wobble from the movement of the camera as she shot it. Her face fell as her evidence vanished into disappearing pixels. "I don't understand. I know what I saw."

"Maybe it's what you wanted to see." Paul's voice was less condescending now and he seemed to be showing genuine concern and a bit of worry. Was she, in fact, going crazy?

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