The Love of My Life(75)

‘Jill!’ I cried. ‘Seriously, I have to get out!’

When she ignored me, I undid my seatbelt at the pedestrian crossing by the entrance to Golders Hill Park and tried to open the door. What was she doing?

Like something from a hostage movie, Jill had activated the central locking. ‘Don’t be a lunatic!’ she said. ‘You can’t barrel out of the car like Bruce Willis; you’re an out-of-shape woman of nearly forty!’

‘Jill! I mean it! Let me out.’

But she carried on driving.

She’d spoken to Leo, she said: he was still in shock and needed a couple of days to think.

She repeated this again and again until, finally, I was able to hear her. ‘Which is why I came to get you,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be awful for you to go back to an empty house, thinking you were about to see Leo.’

I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ I said, quietly.

We stopped and started for a while, passing by a rundown parade of shops, but I no longer made any attempt to get out. Leo did not want to see me. It would be Wednesday, maybe even Thursday, before he would be ready. By then he would probably have realised he’d never be able to trust me again, and that would be it: I’d have lost him. That precious man, the love of my new life. My beautiful Leo.

Now we are heading down the North Circular towards the M1 and I barely care where Jill is taking me.

For the fourth or fifth time I reach for my phone, to send a discreet message to Leo, but of course my phone is still in my handbag, on my bed. In my room, in my house, where I hoped to be able to persuade my husband just how deeply I love him.

The traffic thins and Jill puts her foot down.





Chapter Fifty-Two


We don’t turn up the M1. We stay on the North Circular until Wembley, where Jill turns off, and I realise she’s just taking me to her flat.

Of course.

Knowing Jill, she’ll have bought ingredients for a big fry-up, or a huge bag of pastries. There’ll be films we’ve watched in the past. Hot chocolate, lots of counselling and positive talk. I’m not sure Leo and Jill love each other quite the way I love them, but she knows he’s everything to me. She’ll buoy me up; tell me he’ll come round. That we’re meant to be together; we’ll survive this.

I hope she does. I hope we will.

Jill lives in a vast city of new-build flats in Wembley, all landscaped gardens and identikit cafes, heavily marketed with slogans like ‘find the new you’ and ‘your peace on earth’. It’s worlds away from my disgusting little house and I always love coming here. Everything is so perfectly tessellated and tidy; Jill’s fridge is full of Ziplock bags and her cupboards are full of neatly stacked plastic boxes which never contain out-of-date food.

Last month Leo found some smoked paprika seventeen years out of date in my spice rack.

Jill turns off her engine and looks in the rear-view mirror for a few seconds longer than seems natural.

I turn round to look behind us, but there’s nobody here apart from a groundsman building a wooden cage around a young tree.

‘Who’re you looking for?’ I ask, as I get out. She’s scanning around the car park.

‘What? I’m not looking for anybody,’ she says. ‘Right! Let’s get inside and have a cup of tea.’

There’s something going on. She hasn’t just brought me here to cheer me up.

‘Look, I really do think I should text Leo,’ I say. I walk round the front of her car. ‘It’s 10.15, I’m nearly an hour late for our meeting. Please can I borrow your phone?’

‘Later!’

There’s a cold breeze today. I’m wearing one of those infuriating jumpers with sleeves that only stretch just past your elbows. I try to pull them further down my wrists as I follow Jill across the resident’s car park, but I’m still cold.

I notice how each parking space has been painted a different colour to show just how playful life is in HA9.

Jill has been a faithful friend for more than twenty years, but, as I follow her into the lift, I sense a cool hand of unease at my back.





Chapter Fifty-Three


LEO


Now

I call Jill again and again as I cross north-west London towards her flat. It’s 10.30 p.m. and the streets are still busy, even though the cold wind lingers. Council blocks flash past, windows neat squares of yellow, clothes flapping on washing lines in the dark.

Jill’s phone continues to ring out. How could she have been with Emma for nearly twelve hours and not called me back? What are they doing?

Before she drove home, Sheila had given me Jill’s address. If she was disappointed to learn that Emma’s kidnapper was also her oldest friend, she didn’t betray it.

‘Good luck,’ she said, before getting into her car and reversing out of her parking space.

I waved her down, just before she pulled away.

She opened her window. ‘Thank you for doing this,’ I said. ‘You are truly wonderful, Sheila. I – I’m very glad I have you in my life.’

Sheila thought about this for a few seconds, then gave me a businesslike nod. She closed her window and drove off.

I pull off the North Circular at the signs for Wembley Park, and try to call Jill again.

This time, her phone goes straight to voicemail.