The Woman Next Door(54)

It’s only now she realizes there is a sound coming from outside the bathroom: a gentle knocking. Oh God, Hester, she thinks. How long has she been in the shower?

Wrapping the thin, inadequate towel around her body she hurries to the door. Hester almost falls in, wild-eyed, clutching a wriggling package that’s presumably full of dog.

‘Goodness!’ gasps Hester. ‘I’ve been out there for ages! Didn’t you hear me, I was …’

She seems to bite off the end of her sentence as she takes in Melissa’s appearance. Her cheeks flush hard and she drops her eyes. The dog bursts from the package and lands four-footed on the floor, where it begins to sniff about excitedly. Melissa flinches when its nose touches the bare skin of her foot.

‘Oh you poor girl,’ says Hester, still avoiding her eyes. ‘You’ve been crying. Are you all right?’ She is still blushing fiercely, which Melissa has never seen before. One of her hands drifts up towards Melissa’s naked shoulder, a little shakily, and Melissa finds herself stepping back as she nods. Please don’t hug me, she thinks, knowing that any kindness like this will cause her to split at the seams.

‘I’m fine,’ she says croakily, her throat dry and sore from sobbing and sickness. ‘Really. I just need to rest for a while, that’s all.’

Fervently hoping Hester won’t want to have some sort of post-mortem of events, Melissa crosses to the furthest single bed and reluctantly puts on her knickers and bra again.

This probably shouldn’t matter because she feels as though she will never be truly clean again, anyway.

Even though Jamie’s body was thrown in the water, she feels as dirty as if she had dug a grave with her bare hands, soil blackening her fingernails and working into the creases of her skin. She stares at her hands now, as if looking for the evidence and, thank goodness, the practical girl inside her comes to the fore and tells her to cut the Lady Macbeth stuff and get a grip on herself.

Suddenly aware that Hester’s eyes are on her, Melissa looks up and then, flustered, puts on her t-shirt, jeans, and socks. Finding a comb in her handbag, she drags it through her hair and then lies down on the single bed, facing the bathroom.

‘Do you mind if I draw the curtains?’ says Hester quietly.

Melissa shakes her head on the pillow. There’s a swooshing sound and blissful darkness enfolds the room. At least there are proper blackout curtains here. Melissa closes her aching eyes.

Hester gives a little sigh and mutters to the dog, which is no doubt in the bed already. There’s a creak as the other woman lies down.

Even though exhaustion presses down on her, pinning her body to the bed, Melissa’s mind is clearly not going to allow her the rest she craves. Instead, it presents her with an HDTV-quality flicker book of images she doesn’t want to see: Jamie’s lifeless eyes staring up at her; the heft of his body as he slumped sideways on the trolley. The jammy mess in his hair and the crump of his face hitting the tiled floor. Jamie standing on her front doorstep; Jamie gently flirting with Tilly.

Tilly.

Scrabbling to a sitting position, Melissa fumbles to the side of the bed for her handbag and the phone inside.

She hadn’t even thought about her daughter for hours. What kind of mother is she? Her iPhone comes to life and shows that she has five messages:

Tilly, 11 p.m.: ‘Going 2 beach with Stacey and co in morning. C U pm’.

Mark: ‘Hold-ups with filming. Sorry. Home early Weds. Mx’.

And then three from Saskia:

‘How U feeling hon? Sxxxxx’;

‘Making most of Nate doghouse. Currently weeding garden LOL!’;

‘Hope sleep sorted you out. Call me? Sxxx’.

Weak with relief that there hadn’t been an emergency, Melissa taps out quick messages to all three and then flops backwards on the bed.

‘Everything okay?’ Hester sounds sleepy and hoarse.

Melissa is suddenly overcome with a wash of pure loss.

She doesn’t deserve any of them anymore.

Staring up at the ceiling in the gloomy light, she hears the distant hum of the motorway and the rustling of Hester in the other bed. The dog gives a sleepy little woof in its dreams.

‘I don’t know, Hester,’ she whispers finally. ‘I’m not sure any of it will ever be right again.’

There’s further movement and she turns over to see Hester is now facing her. The dim lighting highlights the lines on her face. The other woman looks old and exhausted. A fresh stab of guilt assails Melissa. She should just have called the police and tried to make the self-defence story work. At least then Hester wouldn’t be an accessory to a crime.

‘Oh God, what have I done?’ she says, turning to let the tears soak into her pillow. The bed compresses next to her; she feels the gentle touch of the other woman’s hand on her shoulder, gently patting, and then stroking her hair. It helps. Comforting her like the hand of the mother she never had.

She didn’t think she had more tears to spare but Melissa sobs, her shoulders shaking.

Hester says, ‘there, there, darling, there, there,’ over and over again, so softly it’s only just possible to hear her.

After a while, Melissa turns the other way and grabs some tissues from the box on the side. Blowing her nose with a damp honk, she gestures to Hester to make room for her to get up. Hester moves back to the other bed and they sit, knee to knee.