The Woman Next Door(59)

HESTER


I place my hand against the wall to steady myself. My legs are shaking. I’m winded, like someone has hit me in the tummy.

I was only coming round to see how she was. As I got to the French doors I heard Saskia’s awful voice. Their conversation drifted out like dirty smoke. I feel it fill my lungs, choking and poisoning me.

Such cruel words. And the laughter. Openly laughing at me. I can’t take it in. The vile friend isn’t a surprise. She’s nothing but a trollop. But Melissa? After everything we’ve been through. How could she speak about me like that? As though I were nothing to her? After what I did for her?

Some masochistic urge makes me want to stay and hear more but after they’ve purged themselves of their mirth, Saskia begins to witter on about her idiot man-child. I clench my hands so hard into fists my nails cut my palms. I picture her open mouth, with those big teeth laughing and swallowing all the air around her. Sucking Melissa into her orbit. Turning her against me. I imagine grabbing that thick, dark hair of hers and pulling it, pulling it until she begs me to stop. Oh yes, that would surprise you, wouldn’t it, Saskia?

I have to get away from here. Stumbling a little, I hurry back to the garden gate and back towards my own house.

Bertie whines when I come back into the kitchen. He can always tell when I’m distressed. I pick him up and hold him tightly to my chest as I go into the sitting room and slump into my armchair. I feel as though I am a thousand years old.

We sit together, my little friend – my only friend – and I, stroking him until he falls asleep in my lap, his small chest rising and falling. I lay my hand on his warm, coarse hair and sit, immobile with misery.

The betrayal feels like cold mud sludging through my veins. When I think of what I have done for Melissa. She doesn’t deserve a friend like me. I should have left her to sort that Jamie man out on her own. Ha! I’d like to have seen her dealing with things the way I did!

The pictures tumble into my mind now, so vivid I can almost smell her kitchen and feel its walls erecting themselves in a dreamscape around me.

***

When that bubbling sound drifted up from her kitchen floor, it gave me quite a start. I’d honestly believed he was already dead, as Melissa had said.

As I cautiously walked towards him I could see that he was looking right at me. A froth of spit formed and broke at his mouth. His lips moved the tiniest fraction as he tried to speak.

I stared down at him.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying. It may have been ‘help’, I suppose. But my mind was racing. If I called an ambulance he could make a full recovery. But no one would have believed Melissa hit him as an act of self-defence. No one ever believes the victim of this sort of crime.

The thought of Melissa being led away in handcuffs was so terrible, so entirely wrong, that I was suddenly quite resolute. I knew that I couldn’t let it happen.

His eyes flared with hope when I sat back and regarded him.

All I could see in my mind’s eye was his filthy ape-hands pawing at Melissa’s soft skin, trying to soil and hurt her.

But it wasn’t just that. It was the sight of him early that morning. Striding around in his underpants. So arrogant. As though he had rights over Melissa. As though he had a central place in her life. Calling me Grandma! And I’ve not even had the good fortune to be a mother.

And I suppose everything that had happened with that Nathan boy boiled up inside too.

Rage is meant to be hot isn’t it? But it filled me with a cleansing white light – pure and cold. Shushing him gently, I placed my hands over his nose and mouth. Weakened as he was, he bucked and kicked but with little strength. Still, I had to press my torso down onto his face. And it seemed to go on and on … I closed my eyes, begging him just to let go, to accept things.

A powerful happiness coursed through me. At last, I thought, I can show Melissa what she means to me. And yes, I’ll admit it; all the way through this I was seeing that other day in my mind, when I finally became free of the useless man I had married. There had been a delicious sense of freedom then too.

It is crossing a line the first time that feels like such a big step, you see. Once you have done it once, it’s no distance at all. So I pressed down until it was over.

We all have dark impulses sometimes, I’m sure.

Melissa doesn’t know what I did for her.

Well, I’m not going to let it go.

When I lift Bertie gently to the ground, he eyes me and thumps his tail happily before going back to sleep. My dear boy. He’s the only one I can rely on.

I go into the kitchen and pick up the little shepherdess ornament from the windowsill. I’ve always loved her blonde curls and the tiny dog at her feet that reminds me of Bertie.

Her crinoline skirt is hollow and, underneath, Melissa’s spare back door key nestles there comfortably.

I set my alarm for 3 a.m. but I’m not really asleep when it beep-beep-beeps into the darkness. I’m too stirred up to sleep. I’m shivering, with nerves, with the chill of night but also, perhaps, with a little bit of excitement as I slip on my dressing gown and slippers and make my way out of the bedroom. Bertie wakes and I whisper sternly that he is to stay. With an obedient little flick of the tail, he lays his old head down again to sleep.

I switch on the garage light, smelling the old paint tins, dust, and white spirit that still fill some of the shelves in neat rows. Terry always did keep it very tidy in here. A draft curls under the doors and I hear the wind bash against it, as though longing to be allowed inside.