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RACHEL
THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 2013
MORNING
Cathy has got me a job interview. A friend of hershas set up her own public relations firm and sheneeds an assistant. It’s basically a glorified secretarialjob and it pays next to nothing, but I don’t care.
This woman is prepared to see me withoutreferences—Cathy’s told her some story about myhaving a breakdown but being fully recovered now.
The interview’s tomorrow afternoon at this woman’shome—she runs her business from one of thoseoffice sheds in the back garden—which just happensto be in Witney. So I was supposed to be spendingthe day polishing up my CV and my interviewingskills. I was—only Scott phoned me.
“I was hoping we could talk,” he said.
“We don’t need?.?.?. I mean, you don’t need to sayanything. It was?.?.?. We both know it was a mistake.”
“I know,” he said, and he sounded so sad, not likethe angry Scott of my nightmares, more the brokenone that sat on my bed and told me about his deadchild. “But I really want to talk to you.”
“Of course,” I said. “Of course we can talk.”
“In person?”
“Oh,” I said. The last thing I wanted was to have togo back to that house. “I’m sorry, I can’t today.”
“Please, Rachel? It’s important.” He soundeddesperate and, despite myself, I felt bad for him. Iwas trying to think of an excuse when he said itagain. “Please?” So I said yes, and I regretted it thesecond the word came out of my mouth.
There’s a story about Megan’s child—her first deadchild—in the newspapers. Well, it’s about the child’sfather, actually. They tracked him down. His name’sCraig McKenzie, and he died of a heroin overdose inSpain four years ago. So that rules him out. It neversounded to me like a likely motive in any case—ifsomeone wanted to punish her for what she’d doneback then, they’d have done it years ago.
So who does that leave? It leaves the usualsuspects: the husband, the lover. Scott, Kamal. Orsome random man who snatched her from thestreet—a serial killer just starting out? Will she be thefirst of a series, a Wilma McCann, a Pauline Reade?
And who said, after all, that the killer had to be aman? She was a small woman, Megan Hipwell. Tiny,birdlike. It wouldn’t take much force to take herdown.
AFTERNOON
The first thing I notice when he opens the door isthe smell. Sweat and beer, rank and sour, and underthat something else, something worse. Somethingrotting. He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a stainedgrey T-shirt, his hair is greasy, his skin slick, asthough with fever.
“Are you all right?” I ask him, and he grins at me.
He’s been drinking.
“I’m fine, come in, come in.” I don’t want to, but Ido.
The curtains on the street side of the house areclosed, and the living room is cast in a reddish huethat seems to suit the heat and the smell.
Scott wanders into the kitchen, opens the fridge andtakes a beer out.
“Come and sit down,” he says. “Have a drink.” Thegrin on his face is fixed, joyless, grim. There’ssomething unkind about the set of his face. Thecontempt that I saw on Saturday morning, after weslept together, it’s still there.
“I can’t stay long,” I tell him. “I have a jobinterview tomorrow, I need to prepare.”
“Really?” He raises his eyebrows. He sits down andkicks a chair out towards me. “Sit down and have adrink,” he says, an order, not an invitation. I sitdown opposite him and he pushes the beer bottletowards me. I pick it up and take a sip. Outside, Ican hear shrieking—children playing in a back gardensomewhere—and beyond that, the faint and familiarrumble of the train.
“They got the DNA results yesterday,” Scott says tome. “Detective Riley came to see me last night.” Hewaits for me to say something, but I’m frightened ofsaying the wrong thing, so I stay silent. “It’s notmine. It wasn’t mine. The funny thing is, it wasn’tKamal’s, either.” He laughs. “So she had someoneelse on the go. Can you believe it?” He’s smiling thathorrible smile. “You didn’t know anything about that,did you? About another bloke? She didn’t confide inyou about another man, did she?” The smile isslipping from his face and I’m getting a bad feelingabout this, a very bad feeling. I get to my feet andtake a step towards the door, but he’s there in frontof me, his hands gripping my arms, and he pushesme back into the chair.
“Sit the fuck down.” He grabs my handbag frommy shoulder and throws it into the corner of theroom.
“Scott, I don’t know what’s going on—”
“Come on!” he shouts, leaning over me. “You andMegan were such good friends! You must haveknown about all her lovers!”
He knows. And as the thought comes to me, hemust see it in my face because he leans in closer, hisbreath rancid in my face, and says, “Come on,Rachel. Tell me.”
I shake my head and he swings a hand out,catching the beer bottle in front of me. It rolls off thetable and smashes on the tiled floor.
“You never even fucking met her!” he yells.
“Everything you said to me—everything was a lie.”
Ducking my head, I get to my feet, mumbling, “I’msorry, I’m sorry.” I’m trying to get round the table,to retrieve my handbag, my phone, but he grabs myarm again.
“Why did you do this?” he asks. “What made youdo this? What is wrong with you?”
He’s looking at me, his eyes locked on mine, andI’m terrified of him, but at the same time I knowthat his question isn’t unreasonable. I owe him anexplanation. So I don’t pull my arm away, I let hisfingers dig into my flesh and I try to speak clearlyand calmly. I try not to cry. I try not to panic.
“I wanted you to know about Kamal,” I tell him. “Isaw them together, like I told you, but you wouldn’thave taken me seriously if I’d just been some girl onthe train. I needed—”
“You needed!” He lets go of me, turning away.
“You’re telling me what you needed?.?.?.” His voice issofter, he’s calming down. I breathe deeply, trying toslow my heart.
“I wanted to help you,” I say. “I knew that thepolice always suspect the husband, and I wanted youto know—to know there was someone else?.?.?.”
“So you made up a story about knowing my wife?
Do you have any idea how insane you sound?”
“I do.”
I walk over to the kitchen counter to pick up adishcloth, then get down on my hands and kneesand clean up the spilled beer. Scott sits, elbows onknees, head hanging down. “She wasn’t who Ithought she was,” he says. “I have no idea who shewas.”
I wring the cloth out over the sink and run coldwater over my hands. My handbag is a couple offeet away, in the corner of the room. I make a movetowards it, but Scott looks up at me, so I stop. Istand there, my back to the counter, my handsgripping the edge for stability. For comfort.
“Detective Riley told me,” he says. “She was askingme about you. Whether I was in a relationship withyou.” He laughs. “A relationship with you! Jesus. Iasked her, ‘Have you seen what my wife looked like?
Standards haven’t fallen that fast.’” My face is hot,there is cold sweat under my armpits and at thebase of my spine. “Apparently Anna’s beencomplaining about you. She’s seen you hangingaround. So that’s how it all came out. I said, ‘We’renot in a relationship, she’s just an old friend ofMegan’s, she’s helping me out.’” He laughs again, lowand mirthless. “She said, ‘She doesn’t know Megan.
She’s just a sad little liar with no life.’” The smilefaded from his face. “You’re all liars. Every last oneof you.”
My phone beeps. I take a step towards the bag, butScott gets there before me.
“Hang on a minute,” he says, picking it up. “We’renot finished yet.” He tips the contents of myhandbag onto the table: phone, purse, keys, lipstick,Tampax, credit card receipts. “I want to know exactlyhow much of what you told me was total bullshit.”
Idly, he picks up the phone and looks at the screen.
He raises his eyes to mine and they are suddenlycold. He reads aloud: “This is to confirm yourappointment with Dr. Abdic at four thirty P.M. onMonday, nineteen August. If you are unable to makethis appointment, please be advised that we requiretwenty-four hours’ notice.”
“Scott—”
“What the hell is going on?” he asks, his voice littlemore than a rasp. “What have you been doing?
What have you been saying to him?”
“I haven’t been saying anything?.?.?.” He’s droppedthe phone on the table and is coming towards me,his hands balled into fists. I’m backing away into thecorner of the room, pressing myself between the walland the glass door. “I was trying to find out?.?.?. Iwas trying to help.” He raises his hand and I cringe,ducking my head, waiting for the pain, and in thatmoment I know that I’ve done this before, felt thisbefore, but I can’t remember when and I don’t havetime to think about it now, because although hehasn’t hit me, he’s placed his hands on my shouldersand he’s gripping them tightly, his thumbs digginginto my clavicles, and it hurts so much I cry out.
“All this time,” he says through gritted teeth, “all thistime I thought you were on my side, but you wereworking against me. You were giving him information,weren’t you? Telling him things about me, aboutMegs. It was you, trying to make the police comeafter me. It was you—”
“No. Please don’t. It wasn’t like that. I wanted tohelp you.” His right hand slides up, he grabs hold ofmy hair at the nape of my neck and he twists.
“Scott, please don’t. Please. You’re hurting me.
Please.” He’s dragging me now, towards the frontdoor. I’m flooded with relief. He’s going to throw meout into the street. Thank God.
Only he doesn’t throw me out, he keeps draggingme, spitting and cursing. He’s taking me upstairs andI’m trying to resist, but he’s so strong, I can’t. I’mcrying, “Please don’t. Please,” and I know thatsomething terrible is about to happen. I try toscream, but I can’t, the noise won’t come.
I’m blind with tears and terror. He shoves me intoa room and slams the door behind me. The keytwists in the lock. Hot bile rises to my throat and Ithrow up onto the carpet. I wait, I listen. Nothinghappens, and no one comes.
I’m in the spare room. In my house, this roomused to be Tom’s study. Now it’s their baby’snursery, the room with the soft pink blind. Here, it’sa box room, filled with papers and files, a fold-uptreadmill and an ancient Apple Mac. There is a boxof papers lined with figures—accounts, perhaps fromScott’s business—and another filled with oldpostcards—blank ones, with bits of Blu-Tack on theback, as though they were once stuck onto a wall:
the roofs of Paris, children skateboarding in an alley,old railway sleepers covered in moss, a view of thesea from inside a cave. I delve through thepostcards—I don’t know why or what I’m looking for,I’m just trying to keep panic at bay. I’m trying notto think about that news report, Megan’s body beingdragged out of the mud. I’m trying not to think ofher injuries, of how frightened she must have beenwhen she saw it coming.
I’m scrabbling around in the postcards, and thensomething bites me and I rock back on my heelswith a yelp. The tip of my forefinger is sliced neatlyacross the top, and blood is dripping onto my jeans.
I stop the blood with the hem of my T-shirt andsort more carefully through the cards. I spot theculprit immediately: a framed picture, smashed, with apiece of glass missing from the top, the exposed edgesmeared with my blood.
It’s not a photo I’ve seen before. It’s a picture ofMegan and Scott together, their faces close to thecamera. She’s laughing, and he’s looking at heradoringly. Jealously? The glass is shattered in a starradiating from the corner of Scott’s eye, so it’sdifficult to read his expression. I sit there on the floorwith the picture in front of me and think about howthings get broken all the time by accident, and howsometimes you just don’t get round to getting themfixed. I think about all the plates that were smashedwhen I fought with Tom, about that hole in theplaster in the corridor upstairs.
Somewhere on the other side of the locked door, Ican hear Scott laughing, and my entire body goescold. I scrabble to my feet and go to the window,open it and lean right out, then with just the verytips of my toes on the ground, I cry out for help. Icall out for Tom. It’s hopeless. Pathetic. Even if hewas, by some chance, out in the garden a few doorsdown, he wouldn’t hear me, it’s too far away. I lookdown and lose my balance, then pull myself backinside, bowels loosening, sobs catching in my throat.
“Please, Scott!” I call out. “Please?.?.?.” I hate thesound of my voice, the wheedling note, thedesperation. I look down at my blood-soaked T-shirtand I’m reminded that I am not without options. Ipick up the photo frame and tip it over onto thecarpet. I select the longest of the glass shards andslip it carefully into my back pocket.
I can hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I backmyself up against the wall opposite the door. The keyturns in the lock.
Scott has my handbag in one hand and tosses it atmy feet. In the other hand he is holding a scrap ofpaper. “Well, if it isn’t Nancy Drew!” he says with asmile. He puts on a girly voice and reads aloud:
“Megan has run off with her boyfriend, who fromhere on in, I shall refer to as B.” He snickers. “Bhas harmed her?.?.?. Scott has harmed her?.?.?.” Hecrumples up the paper and throws it at my feet.
“Jesus Christ. You really are pathetic, aren’t you?”
He looks around, taking in the puke on the floor, theblood on my T-shirt. “Fucking hell, what have youbeen doing? Trying to top yourself? Going to do myjob for me?” He laughs again. “I should break yourfucking neck, but you know what, you’re just notworth the hassle.” He stands to one side. “Get out ofmy house.”
I grab my bag and make for the door, but just asI do, he steps out in front of me with a boxer’sfeint, and for a moment I think he’s going to stopme, put his hands on me again. There must beterror in my eyes because he starts to laugh, heroars with laughter. I can still hear him when I slamthe front door behind me.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 2013
MORNING
I’ve barely slept. I drank a bottle and a half of winein an attempt to get off to sleep, to stop my handsshaking, to quieten my startle reflex, but it didn’treally work. Every time I started to drop off, I’d joltawake. I felt sure I could feel him in the room withme. I turned the light on and sat there, listening tothe sounds of the street outside, to people movingaround in the building. It was only when it started toget light that I relaxed enough to sleep. I dreamed Iwas in the woods again. Tom was with me, but still Ifelt afraid.
I left Tom a note last night. After I left Scott’s, Iran down to number twenty-three and banged onthe door. I was in such a panic, I didn’t even carewhether Anna was there, whether she’d be pissed offwith me for showing up. No one came to the door,so I scribbled a note on a scrap of paper andshoved it through the letter box. I don’t care if shesees it—I think a part of me actually wants her tosee it. I kept the note vague—I told him we neededto talk about the other day. I didn’t mention Scott byname, because I didn’t want Tom to go round thereand confront him—God knows what might happen.
I rang the police almost as soon as I got home. Ihad a couple of glasses of wine first, to calm medown. I asked to speak to Detective Inspector Gaskill,but they said he wasn’t available, so I ended uptalking to Riley. It wasn’t what I wanted—I knowGaskill would have been kinder.
“He imprisoned me in his home,” I told her. “Hethreatened me.”
She asked how long I was “imprisoned” for. I couldhear the air quotes over the line.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Half an hour, maybe.”
There was a long silence.
“And he threatened you. Can you tell me the exactnature of the threat?”
“He said he’d break my neck. He said?.?.?. he saidhe ought to bre............
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