The Breakdown(5)

she might still be alive. And wasn’t I meant to have told someone about her? But distracted by Rachel’s text and the present I was meant to have bought for Susie, I’d forgotten all about the woman in the car.

‘Are you going to be long in there, sweetheart?’

Matthew’s voice comes through the bathroom door.

‘I’ll be out in a minute!’ I call over the sound of the

water running wastefully down the drain.

‘I’ll make a start on breakfast, then.’

I strip off my pyjamas and get into the shower. The

water is hot but not hot enough to wash away the

burning guilt I feel. I scrub my body fiercely, trying

not to think about the woman unscrewing a bottle of

pills and shaking them into her hand, lifting them to her mouth and swallowing them down with water. What horrors had she endured to make her want to take her The Breakdown





21


life? And as she was dying, was there a point when she


began to regret what she had done? Hating where my

thoughts are going I turn off the water and get out of

the shower. The sudden silence is unsettling so I locate

the radio on my phone, hoping to hear someone belting

out a song full of hope and cheer, anything to stop me

from thinking about the woman in the car.

‘. . . a woman has been found dead in her car in Blackwater Lane in the early hours of the morning. Her death is being treated as suspicious. No further details have been given for the moment but the police are advising people living in the area to be vigilant.’

Shock takes my breath away. Her death is being treated as suspicious. The words resonate around the bathroom.

Isn’t that what the police say when someone has been

murdered? I feel suddenly frightened. I was there, in the same spot. Had the killer been there too, lurking in the bushes, waiting for the opportunity to kill someone?

The thought that it could have been me, that I could

have been the one to be murdered makes me suddenly

dizzy. I grope for the towel rail, forcing myself to take deep breaths. I must have been mad to have gone that way last night.

In the bedroom, I dress quickly in a black cotton

dress, pulling it from a pile of clothes left on the chair.

Downstairs, the smell of grilled sausages turns my

stomach before I’ve even opened the kitchen door.

‘I thought we’d celebrate the start of your holidays

with a slap-up breakfast,’ Matthew says. He looks so





22


b a paris


happy that I force a smile onto my face, not wanting to

spoil it for him.

‘Lovely.’ I want to tell him about last night, I want

to tell him that I could have been murdered, I want to

share my horror with him because it seems too big a

thing to keep to myself. But if I tell him that I came back through the woods, especially after he told me not to, he’ll be furious. It won’t matter that I’m here, sitting in the kitchen unharmed, not lying murdered in my car.

He’ll feel like I do, scared at what could have happened, appalled that I put myself in danger.

‘So what time are you going shopping?’ he asks. He’s

wearing a grey t-shirt and thin cotton shorts and at any

other time I’d be thinking how lucky I was that he was

mine. But I can barely look his way. It feels as if my

secret is burnt on my skin.

‘As soon as I’ve finished breakfast.’ I look through the

window to the back garden, trying to concentrate on

how lovely it looks but my mind keeps tripping over last

night, over the memory of me driving away. She had

been alive at that point, the woman in the car.

‘Is Rachel going with you?’ Matthew interrupts my

thoughts.

‘No.’ Suddenly, it seems like the best idea in the world

because maybe I could tell her about last night, share

the devastation I feel. ‘Actually, that’s a good idea. I’ll phone and ask her.’

‘Don’t be long,’ he says. ‘It’s almost ready.’

‘I’ll only be a minute.’

The Breakdown





23


I go into the hall, take the house phone – we can


only get mobile reception upstairs in our house - and

dial Rachel’s number. It takes her a while to answer and

when she does her voice is heavy with sleep.

‘I’ve woken you,’ I say, feeling bad, suddenly remembering she only got back from her trip to New York yesterday.

‘It feels like the middle of the night,’ she says grumpily.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nine-thirty.’

‘So it is the middle of the night. Did you get my text?’

The question throws me and I pause, a headache

building behind my eyes. ‘Yes, but I haven’t bought

anything for Susie yet.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’ve been really busy,’ I say quickly, remembering

that for some reason Rachel thinks we’re buying something together. ‘I thought I’d wait until today in case we changed our minds about what to get her,’ I add,