The Woman Next Door(14)

I really must find …

I shove open the nearest door.

Sweat breaks out all over me, greasy and cold. My stomach turns inside out.

I’m staring into Tilly’s face. She’s saying something but I can’t hear because the sour sickness rises up, engulfing me and then spurting out onto the soft pale carpet.

I stare down at the small pool, pink with Pimm’s.

Things have gone terribly wrong.





MELISSA


‘Hello, Mel. Well don’t just stand there, gawping. You going to invite me in, or what?’

Melissa clutches the doorframe. Viscous shock floods her spine.

She can’t think of a single word to say.

He can’t be here? On her doorstep?

He’s laughing; enjoying the moment. Immersing himself gleefully in her distress like a dog cavorting in a filthy puddle.

When she manages to find words, they tumble out messily.

‘What are you …? Why …?’ It feels imperative that she doesn’t say his name aloud. If she does, it will make this all the more real.

Jamie? At her house?

‘Come on, aren’t you even a little bit pleased to see me after all these years?’

Blind instinct makes Melissa try to close the door, but he is too quick for her and pushes his white trainered foot into the gap. She immediately feels foolish.

‘Really? Come on!’ he says, head cocked to one side, not smiling now.

Of course, she can’t just slam the door in his face. Can she?

‘This is a bit of a surprise.’ Her voice sounds very far away to her own ears.

‘I bet.’

Jamie holds out his arms, as if to say, ‘this is me!’, and she looks at him properly now, registering that he is both unchanged and yet completely different.

The dark brown eyes are feathered by lines but the features that once crowded his teenage face, gawky and out of proportion, now suit him. His face is thicker, more square-jawed, but it is his body that is quite transformed. Although still on the short side, the skinny, concave-chested boy now looks like someone who works out with dedication. A broad chest and arms rounded with muscle are showcased in a tight t-shirt. His hair is cropped short.

The last time Melissa had seen him, his face was covered with snot and tears. He’d looked like the little boy he still was inside: sixteen to her seventeen.

He has a large holdall slung across one shoulder and an expectant tilt to his eyebrows. Surely he can’t think …

‘What the fuck are you doing here, Jamie?’ she says in little more than a whisper. Saying his name makes it all feel worse, just as she’d anticipated. ‘How did you …’, she swallows, ‘find me?’

Jamie shifts position, moving the bag onto the other shoulder, and his expression slackens. He’s always done that puppy dog thing to guilt trip her, but then his eyes and mouth thin and harden and she feels a flash of something else. The back of her neck prickles. This is new.

‘That’s not very welcoming, is it?’ he says, shifting the holdall in a way designed to emphasize how very heavy it is. ‘After all we’ve been through together? Can’t a girl make an effort for her own brother?’

She’s about to speak when she feels a hot, clammy hand on her bare arm.

‘Mum!’

Tilly has materialized at the front door. Her eyes are wide, shining, and she bristles with appalled excitement.

‘You won’t believe what’s happened! Hester has been sick! All over my …’

She stops speaking abruptly, staring openly at Jamie. ‘Did you just say, brother?’ Her mouth drops open and she seems to shed years. She’s once more the tiny girl who has just discovered Father Christmas has ‘been’.

Jamie chuckles easily. His gaze drifts up and down Tilly’s entire length.

Tilly flushes. Melissa wants to lean over and rake her newly done nails across Jamie’s face. Instead she steps in front of her daughter, creating a physical barrier. She wants to erase this moment from history. She wants to make it all un-happen.

‘He’s not my brother.’ She tries to laugh dismissively but her face is too rigid. It’s all she can do to spit words out through tight lips.

‘Well, foster brother, so close enough,’ says Jamie with a twinkle, holding out his arms. ‘I’m Jamie. And who are you? No, hang on … I reckon you should be called something like Aphrodite, or Kate Moss, or something.’

Tilly emits a shrill giggle, still blushing furiously. Melissa’s head feels like it’s going to explode. How could her privately educated, clever daughter lap up such bullshit?

Why is he here? What does he want? She has to clamp her lips together to stop a soft moan from seeping out.

‘What is it, Tilly?’ she snaps. She’s distantly aware of some other issue she must absorb. ‘What did you say about someone being sick?’

Tilly starts at her mother’s tone. ‘Oh … Hester’s puked on my carpet.’

‘What?’

Melissa opens her mouth and closes it again. Her head throbs.

The light is almost sepia now. Bruise-coloured clouds have gathered over the low sky and seem to roil and move too fast. Everything has a sickly, unreal feel. The sticky air presses in all around her and sweat breaks out along her hairline.