The Guilty Couple(33)
Still, he’s got her phone now which kills two birds. No more bullying and no more contact with her mum. Any conversations they have now will be confined to supervised visits with Esther and George, and Olivia won’t be able to do so much as sneeze without Dani telling him about it.
After their conversation in the car park he panicked and sent a frantic text on his burner phone, saying he urgently needed to find thirty grand. The reply, when it came, was as measured as ever. Making an enemy of Dani would be foolish and an insight into Olivia’s movements would be useful. Dom should withdraw a thousand pounds on his credit card and give it to Dani, promising to pay her the rest in seven days. In the meantime he should string her along. By the time she started making noises about the other twenty-nine thousand, she wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
Now Dominic rounds his desk, picks up Grace’s pink mobile phone and chucks it into his safe. He sighs with relief as he closes the door and the electronic display bleeps that it’s locked. In six days’ time he’ll be millions of pounds richer, Dani will be out of his life, and Olivia will never see her daughter again.
Chapter 23
OLIVIA
When I woke up this morning and checked my phone I was convinced that Sonia hadn’t replied. There was every chance she was in touch with Jack and had no need to have a conversation with me. Or perhaps my message had scared her – I had been convicted for conspiracy to murder and for all she knew I could be the psychopath everyone else believed me to be. I’d slept fitfully and my head was foggy from too much wine but I wasn’t dreaming Sonia’s reply:
Hello, Olivia, I would very much like to talk to you. We’ve all been hugely worried about Jack. I am happy to chat to you over the phone or, if you’d like to pop in for a coffee, I’ll be in all day (between football runs) if you’re able to travel to Audley End. Here’s my phone number and address …
I was surprised that she’d invited me into her home but I wasn’t about to give her reason to change her mind. I messaged her back, telling her I’d be over around 2 p.m.
It’s a half-hour walk from Audley End train station to Sonia’s house on Freshwell Street and I’m hot and sweaty when I arrive. The house is a terraced cottage with a tiled roof, overgrown with moss, a wooden front door with shrubs in pots on either side and sash windows made up of lots of little panes of glass. A quick peek in one of the windows reveals a living room with beams running along the ceiling, a brick fireplace and wood burner, and soft squishy sofas. It looks cosy, warm and lived-in, the kind of home I could imagine sharing with Grace. I could kill Dominic for taking her phone away from her. It was the one lifeline I had to check she was okay. I’m not going to see her again until Monday and I’m terrified she might do something silly between now and then. But what can I do? It’s Saturday so I can’t turn up at school and if I go round to the house Dominic will have me arrested. Please, I will her, please stay strong.
I raise a hand to rattle the knocker on Sonia’s door. It opens before I can touch it and I jolt in alarm.
‘Olivia?’ says a tall, middle-aged woman with jaw-length brown curly hair, glasses and a wide warm smile. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump. I saw you approaching from the kitchen.’ She steps back into the hallway and I follow her inside. ‘Can I take your coat?’
I’m so stunned at how similar she looks to her brother that it takes me a second to register what she just asked. She’s got the same broad nose, pinched at the tip, deep brown eyes and identical lines either side of her mouth when she smiles. I didn’t have a mental image of her on the train down here. Her Facebook photo was of a couple of dogs and the banner was of a beach somewhere. All her other photos were locked down.
‘Sorry, yes, of course.’ I shrug off my coat and hand it to her. There’s a line of wellies and trainers on a shoe rack along one of the walls. ‘Should I take off my shoes too?’
‘No need. We’ve got a golden retriever and a corgi. Mud on the rugs is the least of our problems!’ She spots me glancing around for the dogs and adds, ‘They’re in the garden. Don’t worry. We’ve got the house to ourselves.’
‘Your children …’ I search around for their names. Jack definitely mentioned a nephew and niece.
‘Elsie’s out with her friends and Dylan’s got a football match.’
The conversation’s so easy-going and cordial that I feel completely disarmed. I’d expected her to be brusque or reserved.
‘Should I?’ I gesture towards the living room.
‘Yes of course, take a seat.’ She glances at her watch. ‘We’ve got about an hour until I need to collect Dylan. Would you like a tea? Coffee? Some water perhaps?’
I shake my head even though my throat is parched. I can’t put this conversation off a moment longer, I need to know what she knows.
‘No problem.’ She takes a seat on the sofa and her eyes flick over my face, my hair and my body. She’s judging me, I can tell. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ she says. ‘But you look very different from the photos that were shown on the news.’
I prickle, prepared to defend myself. ‘In what way?’
‘You’re softer in person. You looked hard-faced on the TV.’
‘Oh.’ I’m not sure how to respond. ‘I was scared. I’d never gone to court before.’