The Breakdown(68)

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 21st

I add the pills that Matthew brought me this morning to the little pile already in my drawer, because if I’m to drive to Heston today I need a clear head. I spend a long time in the shower, letting the water wash over me and when I eventually get out I feel mentally stronger than I have for a long time. Almost reborn. Maybe that’s why, when the phone starts ringing around ten o’clock, I decide to answer it. For a start, I want to check that the calls weren’t just a figment of my imagination and, secondly, I can’t really believe that he would continue to call when I haven’t answered the phone in God knows how long.

The sharp drawing in of breath as I take the call tells me I’ve taken him by surprise, and delighted that I’ve wrong-footed him I’m able to cope with the silence coming down the line better than before. My breathing, normally shaky with fear, remains even.

Title: The Breakdown ARC, Format: 126x198, v1, Output date:08/11/16





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‘I’ve missed you.’ The whispered words slide silkily down the line, hitting me like an invisible force. Fear resurfaces, raising bumps on my skin, choking me with its venom. I throw the phone down. It doesn’t mean he’s nearby, I tell myself, trying to regain some of the calm I’d felt earlier. J ust because he spoke to you it doesn’t mean he’s watching you. I take a few breaths, reminding myself that the fact he wasn’t expecting me to answer the phone proves that he doesn’t know my every move. But it’s hard not to feel afraid all over again. What if he decides to pay me a visit, now that he knows I’m back in the land of the living?

I go into the kitchen, my eyes instinctively checking first the window, then the back door. I try the handle; it remains reassuringly unmoveable. No one can get in unless I let them.

I go to make coffee, but remembering the struggles I had with the machine yesterday, I pour myself a glass of milk instead, wondering why my caller chose to speak to me this time when he never has before. Maybe he wanted to destabilise me because, for the first time, he hadn’t been able to sense my fear. I feel a surge of triumph at having changed something fundamental between us. I haven’t exactly brought him out into the open but I’ve made him divulge a little of himself, even if it was only a whisper.

I don’t want to get to Heston too early so I do a little tidying to take my mind off the fact that I’m alone in the house. But my mind won’t settle. I make myself a The Breakdown





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cup of mint tea, hoping it will calm me, and sit in the


kitchen drinking it. Time passes slowly but with a lot of willpower I manage to hang on until eleven and then I leave, putting on the alarm as I go. As I drive through Browbury I remember the last time I was here, the day I bumped into John, and work out that it must have been about five weeks ago. When I remember how scared I’d been that day because I’d thought that the murderer was in the garden, I feel real anger that someone could instil such fear in me. And where had those five weeks gone? Where had the summer gone?

I arrive in Heston, leave my car in the same road and cross over to the park. There’s no sign of Jane’s husband or the children but I didn’t expect it to be that easy. I don’t want to think about the possibility that he might not come to the park at all, or what I’ll do if he refuses to listen to me so I sit for a while on an empty bench, enjoying the feel of the late September sun on my face.

At around twelve-thirty I make my way to the pub,

stopping off at the village shop to buy a newspaper. I order a coffee at the bar and carry it through to the garden. There are a surprising number of people already having lunch there and I feel suddenly conspicuous, not only because I’m alone but also because everyone seems to know each other, or at least be regular customers.

I find a small table under a tree, a little away from everyone, and open the paper. The headlines aren’t very interesting so I turn to the next page. An article with the





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title ‘Why has nobody been arrested?’ jumps out at me.

I don’t have to read it to know it’s about Jane’s murder.

Alongside the article is a photograph of a young

woman, a friend of Jane’s, who seems as frustrated as I am by the slowness of the police investigation. ‘ Somebody must know who the murderer is,’ she is quoted as saying, a sentiment picked up and chewed over by the reporter.

‘ Two months ago, a young woman was brutal y murdered,’ the article finishes. ‘ Somebody somewhere must know something. ’

I close the paper, my stomach churning. As far as I know, the police had stopped appealing for the person who saw Jane alive in her car that night to re-contact them but this latest article might stir things up again.

I’m too wound up to sit, so I leave the pub and start walking down the street in search of Jane’s husband because now, more than ever, I don’t want to go away empty-handed. I have no idea where he lives, if he lives in the village itself or in the new estate that has been built on its outskirts but as I pass a row of stone cottages I see two identical tricycles parked in one of the front gardens. Without giving myself the chance to hesitate I walk up the path and knock on the front door.

I see him checking me out through the window but