The Woman Next Door(34)
‘Hester.’
‘Yes?’ It’s hard to keep the smile out of my voice; the fantasy was so delicious.
‘You’re making a weird noise!’
Am I? I’m horrified by this. Terry picked up on that too. I think I make a sort of humming sound sometimes when I’m lost in my thoughts. I must try very hard not to do that. ‘I do apologize,’ I say stiffly.
There’s a very loaded pause before she speaks again.
‘Really, if you’re feeling very tired and not up to this, I am completely okay to drive.’
I’m slapping my hand onto the steering wheel before I even know I’m going to do it. It stings and the sound rings out, disproportionately loud. I think we are both a little shocked by the sudden violence of this.
‘Please stop undermining me, Melissa. I am fine. Everything is fine.’ I try to catch my breath, which has become shallow, as though I have been running. ‘Why don’t you try and have a little sleep?’ I say a little more gently.
She lets out a strange sound that is somewhere between a gasp and a laugh then but doesn’t say anything else. To calm myself, I glance down at Bertie, who is now fast asleep by Melissa’s feet. I’m glad because the poor dog must have been wondering what on earth is going on.
He’s not the only one.
Before too long I’m indicating for the westbound M25. I push myself back in the seat and grip the steering wheel as we come down the slip road and it seems to help my nerves a little.
It’s quite busy, despite the late hour, but this is a good thing because before long we have run out of overhead lighting. I am nervous about driving in the dark as it is, particularly at these speeds. But I find that I can stay close to other cars and follow their lights.
We drive in silence for some time then and, to my surprise, I begin to relax and a rather comforting feeling settles over me. Here we are, hurtling through the darkness in this metal container, linked by what we have been through together in a way that, hopefully, cannot now be undone. It’s just me and Melissa against the world.
Nothing can change what happened earlier. There are only two people, well, three, I suppose, who were party to the events in Melissa’s kitchen. Saskia, Tilly, and Mark may as well all be on another planet now. I am the one helping Melissa.
Only me.
It’s hard to stop the smile in my heart from spreading to my face.
Every now and then I glance to my left to check Melissa is all right. It’s hard to tell though, because she just looks straight ahead, her face as impassive as a sphinx. Her hands are tightly wound together and resting between her knees. She doesn’t even seem to mind the fact that Bertie is lying on her feet in their Ugg boots. I privately call them Uggly boots and can’t understand why so many women wear them. Still, perhaps Bertie feels they are comforting, as Melissa presumably does. And heaven knows we all need a little comfort today.
To be perfectly honest, as unpleasant as this all is, I’m enjoying having something to do at last. Life used to be so busy, but the days do drag now.
***
I had planned a life that would follow certain lines, you see. Bringing up children would fill my days. I would be just like those women you see in the advertisements. You know, the ones who look so happy and busy, settling down to a dinner table with the family, while everyone competes good-naturedly to share details of their days. I’d be dishing out mashed potato to one child while gently chiding another to eat their broccoli. It’s all so clear in my mind that I could almost write the script.
And then, when it became clear this life was not the one meant for me, I threw myself into my work.
I try not to dwell on it but, on some days, I still miss my job so much it gives me actual pains.
It wasn’t as though I needed the money, even with Terry’s poor career choices. Mum and Dad had left me the house and a tidy nest egg. Terry was always on at me to spend it and ‘splash out’ on this and that, but what point was there in the two of us going away on cruises or staying in hotels? I couldn’t think of anything worse. It wasn’t about the income. It was all I ever wanted, to have a family of my own. Working in the office at Butterflies Nursery was a poor substitute but the next best thing, I suppose.
They’d had fifteen years of my life at that nursery. Fifteen years of caring for those children and being the most organized Office Manager they could have wished for. I ran that office like the CEO of a successful business.
But then the company was bought by a successful chain and the regime changed entirely. The officious, ferret-faced Manager, a young woman called Irena, told me that there was no longer any need for an Office Manager under the ‘new model’.
I put up a fight, of course I did.
But as Irena continued to speak her Judas words, it transpired that there had been complaints about me. Parents who didn’t approve of their toddler coming home from school with a fuzzy lolly stick in their pocket, or were disgruntled when I told them their child could do with a scarf on a cold day.
And yes, I did reprimand the odd child and make them sit on a naughty chair if they were rude or unkind at playtime. You don’t need a degree in Education to know how to do that. No one had ever complained under the old regime, as far as I was aware. The previous owners had never minded and, apart from the occasional snippy comment from some of the younger guard of nursery nurses, I had never felt that I was anything other than an integral part of that place.