The Woman Next Door(31)
Melissa focuses now on the background to the picture. Behind him is a river. She can just see distinctive spiky reeds fringing the bank. The well is to his right and the house itself in the background. There is an unusual red-brick tower that is almost equidistant to the well. If it is still there (and this in itself is a long shot) it should be possible to locate it.
Hester is beaming at her in that way that causes an unpleasant ripple of emotion. There’s still something ‘off’ about her energy. It’s as though she has more colour in her cheeks than Melissa has ever seen in her before.
It’s all wrong. None of this should be happening. In a moment, the rational person she really is will take charge of things. Call the police and try to make it right.
Instead, she finds herself saying, ‘Thank you, Hester, this is really helpful. But I think we should get going soon.’
Hester pulls a doubtful face. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘as much as I am loth to try and find this place in the dark, I really think we should wait until much later. There is far less risk of us being seen that way.’
Panic rises up inside her again. ‘I can’t just sit here,’ says Melissa, her voice wobbling. ‘We could at least be doing something. And we could make sure we’re there for first light.’
Hester regards her, her expression patient. ‘It will take a few hours to get there but dawn doesn’t come until around 5 a.m. at the moment. I know because the light always comes around the edges of my curtains and wakes me. We should ideally leave at about 2 a.m.’
Her tone is decisive and bossy. Melissa wants to lash out at her, even though Hester is helping her with this terrible mess.
‘No,’ she says with forced calm. ‘I can’t wait until then. I just can’t.’
Melissa and Hester stare at each other and then Hester makes a small sound of frustration.
‘Look,’ her tone is unctuous now, ‘let’s just be sensible and wait a little while longer, then? If we have to sit at the side of the road until dawn comes, so be it, but we should at least give it another hour or two.’
‘Fine,’ says Melissa, wearily. ‘Why don’t you go and get whatever you’re going to need for the journey now and take your dog back, while I get a few things together.’
Hester actually gasps.
‘I can’t leave Bertie all night!’ she says. ‘He must come with us!’
‘But won’t it …?’ Melissa starts to ask the question but her vocabulary can’t accommodate the monstrous images her mind is creating; the dog sniffing and snuffling at Jamie’s plastic-wrapped corpse, desperate to get at the juiciness inside. That’s all he is now … rotting meat. Her stomach heaves.
Luckily, Hester seems to understand what she cannot say.
‘No, no,’ she says hurriedly, ‘of course he won’t because he will have to sit up in the front with us. He’ll be fine. Won’t you, Bertie?’ She reaches down and strokes the dog’s ears. It gazes up at its owner.
Melissa looks away. It is clear that Hester has drawn a line that Melissa will not be allowed to cross. One way or another, that mutt is coming with them to Dorset.
Melissa sighs. She needs to be alone.
Upstairs she showers and changes her clothes. For some time, she sits numbly on the edge of her bed, wrapped in the towel, until her skin begins to chill and she forces herself to get dressed.
She stares into the wardrobe for a good five minutes because she can’t seem to work out what she should do next. Finally, still shivering, she goes to the chest of drawers to find underwear, then jeans, and a long-sleeved t-shirt, which she puts on with the slowness of a much older woman. Her body aches strangely and she feels mildly feverish as she pulls on her fleece hoodie and scrapes her hair back into a ponytail. Glancing at the mirror, she sees a haunted woman staring balefully back at her.
The dress she wore at the party is pooled on the pale blue armchair by the window and she has the strange sensation that if she put it on she could climb back into Before.
Yesterday she was a different person. How naive she had been to think there would be only one Before and After in her life. Yet here was another chasm between her old life and this new one.
Jamie is dead. She murdered him. The words roll around like marbles inside her skull.
A thought jolts through her mind then, making her gasp audibly.
The bag Jamie had with him last night. Where did he put it?
She hurries into the guest room and stops when she sees the evidence of his presence straight away. The bed is made and she pictures his body warming the sheets last night before he came into her room. The bed probably still smells of him.
She turns away hurriedly to the chest of drawers, where he’d lain out a Lynx deodorant, a small soap bag, a handful of change, and a mobile phone. There’s something neat about the way he has put them there. Then she realizes. It is a habit from prison: keeping your small amount of belongings neat and tidy. She wishes she didn’t know this and, at the same time, feels a belly punch of sorrow.
Melissa scoops the mobile into her pocket. They’ll have to dump it somewhere on the way to Dorset. She glances around the bedroom, searching for the holdall he’d arrived with. It isn’t lying anywhere obvious and so, grumbling under her breath, Melissa pulls out drawers and looks in the wardrobe. Then she spots that one of the big drawers under the bed, where she keeps spare bed linen, isn’t flush. It’s jutting out a little on one side. Dropping the items on the bed, she gets to her knees and pulls the large drawer towards her. It rolls smoothly on its runners until it is entirely free of the bed.