The Woman Next Door(24)

PART TWO





MELISSA


Melissa grips the sink and focuses on trying to breathe. It seems incredible that her body once sucked air in and out again by its own volition. If she stops willing it to happen, her lungs will simply stop working.

Toxic oil seems to pump around her body and the insistent mosquito-whine of her panic is threatening to engulf her. Hurrying to bend over the toilet, she vomits repeatedly until she is only bringing up bitter yellow bile. Afterwards she reaches for mouthwash with a hand that shakes so much she almost drops the bottle. She finally manages to get the minty liquid into her mouth to swill but it makes her feel sick again.

I didn’t mean to.

That’s what she said to Hester.

Those words. She could feel herself saying them before, over and over again, at the side of a road, while rain lashed her bruised face and the world tipped and expanded like it was made from stretchy rubber. No one had cared that she hadn’t ‘meant to’ then.

No one would care now.

It wasn’t entirely true that she hadn’t meant this either. In that moment, after Jamie said what he said, she wanted to stop him. Not to kill him, not that, but to stop him from saying those terrible words and doing what he was threatening to do.

She was stupid to think there was any other reason for him turning up at her door.

Melissa brushes her teeth now in hard circles until her gums throb and she has to spit pink froth into the sink.

She tries to picture what is happening downstairs. Hester is probably calling the police. Melissa sees herself down at the station on a hard plastic seat, vending machine coffee cups multiplying on the desk as the strata of lies she has cocooned herself in all these years begins to unravel.

Tilly.

Saliva floods her mouth. She cannot think about her daughter just now.

She has to get herself together. Get through this – one moment at a time. If she can only concentrate on the very next few minutes, she might be able to find some kind of road map through this nightmare.

After splashing water on her face she fumbles in the cupboard for her make-up bag. It is only as she has the lipstick in her shaking hand, poised at her lips, that she realizes something; this is the tipping point between putting on a game face and behaving like a crazy person.

When Melissa gets to the kitchen she is suddenly certain that all will be normal again. There will be no Jamie. Or he’ll be sitting at the table with a coffee and a cocky smile. The back of his skull won’t be smashed in. His heart will be working. Blood will be pumping around his body, rather than pooling on the floor.

But he’s still lying there, head to the side, eyes closed. One arm is stretched out, his hand palm up. She pictures him flailing and grabbing only air as he fell so shockingly fast and hard. The crump as his body hit the cool, smooth tiles.

She tears her eyes away from him and it hits her forcefully that she can’t hear the wail of sirens.

Hester isn’t on the phone, but standing by the table, slightly smiling at her. Her expression seems as inappropriate as whistling a tune but, then, she has no clue what is normal anymore. The world has spun out of shape and is rearranging itself into a pattern she doesn’t understand any longer.

For one fleeting moment Melissa has the sensation that there is something wrong about all this. Or at least, that there is another layer of wrongness. Is Hester behaving like someone who has stumbled upon a murder?

But perhaps Hester is acting strangely because she is frightened of Melissa. This thought causes a vertiginous dip in her stomach because funny old annoying Hester is all she has right now. She seems like the grown-up who can make it right again.

‘Are you all right?’ says Hester with such gentleness that Melissa’s eyes fill with tears.

‘I don’t know,’ she says in a small, cracked voice. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Hester. I’m so frightened.’ She’s aware of the dry click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

Hester makes a small sound that’s somewhere between a word and a sigh. But Melissa can’t be sure it isn’t just the sea pounding in her own ears.

Hester’s bright chocolate-button eyes shine, the pupils large and black. When she speaks her voice is thick with emotion.

‘You can rely on me,’ she says. ‘We’ll sort this out, somehow. We just need to think things through clearly.’

She makes her way to the counter and climbs onto a stool. Her legs are only just long enough to reach the lower bar of the stool, something Tilly had been able to do since she was eleven.

Melissa walks to the sink and finds two tumblers then moves to the freezer where she retrieves the half-empty bottle of Stolichnaya. She sloshes some into the first glass, and Hester’s voice seems to slice through her clogged thoughts.

‘It’s a little early for that, don’t you think? I’ll just have some water.’

‘It’s … what?’

Melissa’s hand, holding the ice-cold bottle, wavers in mid-air. She carefully puts it on the sink as laughter spasms through her; it hurts, like contractions. There’s a dead man on her floor. Jamie is dead. She killed Jamie. But Hester thinks a drink would be inappropriate. Melissa bends double, laughing in brittle waves that scare her. But it’s impossible to stop and now she’s crying and gasping, grasping for air.