The Girl I Used to Be(51)
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THE NEXT MORNING I got to the office early and slipped the keys to Zoe’s apartment back in the key safe. When Brian and Sophie came in, I made a point of telling him that he needed to do the inventory for the apartment, because I hadn’t been able to go the night before.
“I thought you were going on your way home from work,” said Sophie, who was looking worse for wear after her Friday night out.
“I was,” I lied, “but Joe called and reminded me he had a doctor’s appointment, so I had to go home to Rory.”
She accepted this without another thought and simply poured herself another coffee and hunted in her bag for more painkillers. But that morning I watched Sophie and wondered again what she knew. All the time she was photocopying house details and putting them on the racks in the window, I watched her and thought again about whether she knew about David and Rachel. Did everyone know?
And then I realized that if Sophie had known, she would also have known that Rachel wouldn’t want me to find out. Surely she would have tried to put me off going there the night before?
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WHEN WE STOPPED for coffee that afternoon and Brian had gone off to do the inventory at Zoe’s apartment, I said to Sophie, “Did you have a good time last night?”
She smiled. “A really good time! And I’ve got a date for tonight.” She whipped out her phone and showed us a photo of a young man who was beaming at the camera, his face flushed, his hair damp. He held a beer bottle up to the camera; clearly it wasn’t the first he’d had that night.
“Oh he’s nice!” I said. “Where did you meet him?”
She named a local club in the center of Chester and told us how he’d singled her out from her friends and they’d talked all night.
“Is that where you usually go at weekends?” I asked casually.
“Yes, either on Friday or Saturday.”
“Does Rachel normally go with you?”
She shook her head. “No, she doesn’t like places like that. She likes to just go to the gym or to meet up for lunch or shopping. I go with my school friends or my sister.”
Lucy joined in. “Maybe she’s seeing someone.”
“No, she’s not,” said Sophie. “We were setting up dating profiles the other day.” A shifty expression crossed her face. “Not at work, obviously.”
“And when you had that barbecue at Easter she came on her own,” said Lucy.
I’d forgotten the barbecue. The weather around Easter had been great, so one Sunday evening I’d invited all the staff round to my house for a couple of hours. Lucy and I had watched Sophie chase Rory round the garden with a little bucket of water from his paddling pool, threatening to drench him with it. Both of them had been almost crying with laughter.
“She’s just a kid, isn’t she?” Lucy had said. “She looks so glamorous at times, but look at her now. This is the real Sophie.”
Rachel had arrived later than the others. She’d stood in the kitchen talking to Joe for a while and Lucy had looked over at them and said, “They’re getting along well, aren’t they?” I’d laughed. Joe got along with everyone. I don’t think I’d met anyone who had a bad word to say about him. His Irish charm had been obviously working on Rachel, though; I could see her laughing, her face pink and excited, as she talked to him.
“I think she’s said more to Joe today than she has to us since we’ve known her,” Lucy had said that day. “He’s obviously charmed her.”
“He does have that gift,” I’d replied. “It works on me, anyway. Or it did.”
Lucy had looked at me sympathetically. “It’s always like that when you have a little child,” she had said. “You’ll get back to normal soon.”
I’d nodded. I’d hoped so.
“Rachel seems to have settled in well, hasn’t she?” Lucy asked now. “I noticed you’ve been giving her more responsibilities lately.”
I said, “Yes, she’s been fine,” but I was too distracted to chat. I couldn’t stop thinking about David. Had he called in one day when she was there alone? Had he liked her from the moment he saw her, that day he came to the office? Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a spark between them. She’d blushed when she gave him coffee, but she was a nervous person at times. She hated attention drawn to herself. And when I’d met him in London he hadn’t mentioned her.
Had he targeted her since then? Had he seen another way to get to me?
THIRTY-EIGHT
GEMMA
BY THE TIME it was five P.M., I was determined to go to the police there and then. I just had to trust Stella to do her best to make sure Joe didn’t find out. I could hardly bear to think of the lies I’d told him. There were so many now. At night, unable to sleep, I’d go through them, my face burning with shame.
In the car park I got into my car and sat wondering what to do. My phone beeped with a message, and as I reached into my bag to read it, my heart sank. What was this going to be now? I relaxed when I saw it was from Joe, but when I read his message, I panicked.
What time will you be home? We need to talk.