The Woman Next Door(60)

The shelf is high so I reach for the step stool I bought for Tilly when she was too little to reach the table. It’s a lovely thing: white wood, with blue lambs and chickens gambolling around the bottom. She used to love clambering on and off that step in my kitchen. Such a sweet image.

Stepping onto the upper step of the stool now, my knees complain and creak. I reach up to the shelf above my head and push aside the box of nails and the pile of plumbing catalogues I really must get round to throwing out.

Feeling around blindly in the space behind, my hand touches the crackly plastic bag and I draw the item to the end of the shelf and down. My heart always quickens when I do this. Oddly though, it somehow gives me a feeling of strength and peace.

Holding the wrapped object, I climb down and sit on the top step. I cradle it in my arms, feeling the heft, the potential force of it. I imagine the sound as it connected with hair and skull and swing it through the air, testing how it might have felt.

I won’t unwrap it, because I am not wearing gloves.

I’m still not entirely sure why I kept the blood-and-hair-smeared pestle. Nestled in pieces of kitchen towel, it was placed on the side until I had donned some brand new Marigolds and was able to hide it away properly. I then took one of my spare ice packs and wrapped it firmly in another bin bag. I feel rather tickled by the image of myself throwing that other package into the well.

Some instinct told me I needed insurance.

The pestle’s unpleasant residue is now a deep rusty brown. I can’t face cleaning it (and why should I? I didn’t hit the man with it, after all) but neither can I bear to carry it like this. I rip off a piece of the blue paper that Terry used to keep for wiping his hands as he worked on the van and wrap it around the pestle’s base.

The night air is sweet and cold on my face when I open the back door. They lock that side gate at night, but luckily there is a piece of broken fence (which I have asked Mark to mend to no avail) that should be just about big enough for me to squeeze through.

I hesitate as I contemplate the damp grass and, taking off my slippers, I hold them to cross the garden. My heart pitter-patters a little bit but I am becoming adroit at doing things that intimidate me these days. The cold dampness of the grass under my toes makes me shudder.

The piece of fence comes away with difficulty and I squeeze through the gap, gasping as a nail snags my dressing gown. I extricate myself, grimacing at the aching in my knees as I manoeuvre myself to the other side of the fence.

I walk quickly across the grass, my toes scrunching in protest until I get to the French doors, where I slip my chilled, wet feet into my slippers again.

I have this all planned out but my hands shake as I turn the key in the lock.

Mark’s car isn’t in its usual spot out front. I don’t want to run into Tilly, but I am banking on the fact that teenagers sleep like the dead. And Melissa, well, she’s no stranger to sleeping pills. She told me herself.

The kitchen is bathed in the milky under-lights of the cupboards, along with neon slashes of green from the cooker and microwave. How typical of Melissa not to turn off energy-guzzling appliances at night. The room smells sharply of cleaning products with a very slight hint of cigarette smoke.

My eyes drag to the spot where the body lay and for a horrible second I think he is still there. I swear I can see a lumpy shape, black blood spreading across the floor.

But then the vision clears. I am just being silly.

I go to the ornate metal grate over the air vent in the corner of her kitchen. It’s a quirk of these buildings. I have the same one.

The grate comes away easily and I place the object inside. It makes a metallic screech of protest as I push it back into place. I wait for a few moments, checking there is no sound coming from upstairs, before I get to my feet and dust myself down.

The strange thing is, now I am inside, I am not really afraid. I feel a sense of power, if anything. And I’m not ready to go home yet, to Bertie and my own quiet house.

My eyes stray then to the glint of Melissa’s knife rack on the wall and I wonder how it would feel to use one of them. How hard would you have to push? Would it slide in easily, or would the muscles offer resistance? I imagine the soft gasp of pain and her eyes meeting mine. We would be united by death once more.

Something frantic inside me stills.

Then I am a little shocked at my own imagination. I am a good person and there has been enough violence. I will get my own back my own way.

I’m a small, slight woman and in soft slippers I make no sound as I ascend the staircase. I watch each foot press onto the stair as I rise, acutely aware of the smooth wooden banister under my hand. My nerve endings seem to sing and fizz like a broken fluorescent light. I am electrified with the thrill of this act. More alive perhaps than ever before.

I reach the landing and listen to the gentle sighs and ticks of the sleeping house. A dog barks somewhere outside. Not Bertie. It feels like a night-time companion.

I know which room is hers, of course. The door is pulled over, but not closed. I push it slowly and the door seems to gasp as wood rubs on carpet.

Stepping into the room, I pause and allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom. There is a sour sleep smell in the air, mixed with some sort of perfume I don’t recognize. Hair products, perhaps. The curtains are heavy and at first I can’t make out the bed. Then I see it and – after a second or two – the hump of her body beneath the duvet.

My heart begins to pulse and thrum in a pleasurable way as I pad on silent feet across the room. Melissa is on her side, her face a pale moon, hair a tangled halo on the pillow. I see a hand reaching out – bone-white in the dark, warm room – and realize it is mine. Snatching it back, I feel a little dizzy with the sense of my own power.