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There’s an awful screeching outside as the London train stops at the signal, like nails on a chalkboard. I clench my teeth and take another long swig of wine, and as I do, I notice the time – Jesus, it’s almost seven and Evie’s still sleeping and he’ll be home in a minute, and I’m literally thinking that he’ll be home in a minute when I hear the rattle of the key in the door and my heart stops.

I snap the laptop shut and jump to my feet, knocking my chair over with a clatter. Evie wakes and starts to cry. I put the computer back on the table before he gets into the room, but he knows something’s up and he just stares at me and says, ‘What’s going on?’ I tell him, ‘Nothing, nothing, I knocked over a chair by mistake.’ He picks Evie up out of her pram to give her a cuddle and I catch sight of myself in the hallway mirror, my face pale and my lips stained dark red with wine.

RACHEL

Thursday, 15 August 2013

Morning

CATHY HAS GOT me a job interview. A friend of hers has set up her own public relations firm and she needs an assistant. It’s basically a glorified secretarial job and it pays next to nothing, but I don’t care. This woman is prepared to see me without references – Cathy’s told her some story about me having a breakdown but being fully recovered now. The interview’s tomorrow afternoon at this woman’s home – she runs her business from one of those office sheds in the back garden – which just happens to be in Witney. So I was supposed to be spending the day polishing up my CV and my interviewing skills. 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 say anything. It was … we both know it was a mistake.’

‘I know,’ he said, and he sounded so sad, not like the angry Scott of my nightmares, more the broken one that sat on my bed and told me about his dead child. ‘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 to go back to that house. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t today.’

‘Please, Rachel? It’s important.’ He sounded desperate and, despite myself, I felt bad for him. I was trying to think of an excuse when he said it again. ‘Please?’ So I said yes, and I regretted it the second the word came out of my mouth.

There’s a story about Megan’s child – her first dead child – in the newspapers. Well, it’s about the child’s father, actually. They tracked him down. His name’s Craig McKenzie, and he died of a heroin overdose in Spain four years ago. So that rules him out. It never sounded to me like a likely motive in any case – if someone wanted to punish her for what she’d done back then, they’d have done it years ago.

So who does that leave? It leaves the usual suspects: the husband, the lover. Scott, Kamal. Or some random man who snatched her from the street – a serial killer just starting out? Will she be the first of a series, a Wilma McCann, a Pauline Reade? And who said, after all, that the killer had to be a man? She was a small woman, Megan Hipwell. Tiny, birdlike. It wouldn’t take much force to take her down.

Afternoon

The first thing I notice when he opens the door is the smell. Sweat and beer, rank and sour, and under that something else, something worse. Something rotting. He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a stained grey T-shirt, his hair is greasy, his skin slick, as though 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 I do.

The curtains on the street side of the house are closed, and the living room is cast in a reddish hue which seems to suit the heat and the smell.

Scott wanders into the kitchen, opens the fridge and takes a beer out.

‘Come and sit down,’ he says. ‘Have a drink.’ The grin on his face is fixed, joyless, grim. There’s something unkind about the set of his face. The contempt that I saw on Saturday morning, after we slept together, it’s still there.

‘I can’t stay long,’ I tell him. ‘I have a job interview tomorrow, I need to prepare.’

‘Really?’ He raises his eyebrows. He sits down and kicks a chair out towards me. ‘Sit down and have a drink,’ he says, an order not an invitation. I sit down opposite him and he pushes the beer bottle towards me. I pick it up and take a sip. Outside, I can hear shrieking – children playing in a back garden somewhere – and beyond that, the faint and familiar rumble of the train.

‘They got the DNA results yesterday,’ Scott says to me. ‘Detective Sergeant Riley came to see me last night.’ He waits for me to say something, but I’m frightened of saying the wrong thing, so I stay silent. ‘It’s not mine. It wasn’t mine. The funny thing is, it wasn’t Kamal’s either.’ He laughs. ‘So she had someone else on the go. Can you believe it?’ He’s smiling that horrible smile. ‘You didn’t know anything about that, did you? About another bloke? She didn’t confide in you about another man, did she?’ The smile is slipping from his face and I’m getting a bad feeling about this, a very bad feeling. I get to my feet and take a step towards the door, but he’s there in front of me, his hands gripping my arms, and he pushes me back into the chair.

‘Sit the fuck down.’ He grabs my handbag from my shoulder and throws it into the corner of the room.

‘Scott, I don’t know what’s going on—’

‘Come on!’ he shouts, leaning over me. ‘You and Megan were such good friends! You must have known about all her lovers!’

He knows. And as the thought comes to me, he must see it in my face because he leans in closer, his breath 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 the table 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’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ I’m trying to get round the table, to retrieve my handbag, my phone, but he grabs my arm again.

‘Why did you do this?’ he asks. ‘What made you do this? What is wrong with you?’


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