The Girl I Used to Be(69)

I need to talk to you. Can you get to work at 8 tomorrow?





FIFTY-ONE


    GEMMA


Tuesday, August 15

I WASN’T POPULAR with Joe the next morning as I was up and ready to go to work at seven thirty A.M. I shook him awake just before I left.

“Rory will be up soon,” I said. “I’ve put a carton of juice and a banana on my side of the bed so he can get in with you and have that, but don’t go back to sleep, will you?”

He groaned. “It’s still early! Why are you going in now? The office doesn’t open until nine.”

“I’ve got things I need to do,” I said. “I couldn’t get back to the office last night, so I have to get things ready for the meeting.”

He’d lost interest already.

Rory shot into our bedroom just before I left and I gave him a huge hug. “Your drink’s here, sweetheart, and you can have that banana if you can’t wait for breakfast. Dad’s still dozing. Don’t let him sleep too long, will you?” I winked at him. “But don’t torture him!”

He laughed and I could see he was trying to think up punishments for a sleepy dad. “Can I go on your iPad?”

“Just for half an hour,” I warned, and set the alarm on it. “When the alarm goes off, it’s time for breakfast.”

I closed down Facebook and deleted my history. The last thing I needed was Rory looking at voyeur sites or photos of me when I was young and drunk. He found the game he wanted to play, then opened his carton and accidentally spilled some of his juice down Joe’s back.



* * *



*

WHEN I REACHED the office at eight A.M., Rachel was waiting for me at her desk. Her face was pale and I wondered if she’d had as little sleep as I’d had that night. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her hands shook on her mug of coffee.

She saw me looking at her and flushed. “I know, I look awful.”

“You’re fine,” I said. “Tell people you have hay fever.”

“In August?”

“Or a cold, then.”

I picked up the coffee she’d made for me and sat down next to her.

“I have something to tell you,” she said. She looked dreadful, as though she’d been awake all night. “Last night.” She swallowed hard. “Last night I didn’t say anything to David, obviously.”

So his name was David.

I waited.

“We watched a film on Netflix and he had a few beers.” She grimaced. “With whiskey chasers.”

“Does he drink too much?”

She nodded. “He does sometimes. There’s always an excuse, you know? He’s celebrating something or someone’s annoyed him . . .”

I wondered what excuse he had for drinking the nights he was terrorizing me. Was that a time for celebration?

“Anyway, last night he was annoyed because I wouldn’t have a drink. I was frightened of telling him I knew what had happened, so I wouldn’t even have one.”

“Good idea.”

“Anyway, I went to bed before him. I had a shower, said I was tired. He was on his iPad and stayed up for a while. I don’t know what he was doing.”

My heart sank. We’ll probably find out in the next day or two.

“Anyway, so I went to bed and fell asleep quite quickly.” She looked away from me and started to fiddle with a pen on her desk. “Have you ever woken up suddenly when you hear something that you wouldn’t pay any attention to when you were awake?” I sat quietly, waiting for her to go on. “I used to have an alarm clock that made a tiny sound—a little click—a second before the alarm went off. I would always wake up when I heard it.”

I nodded. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

“Last night I woke up like that. I jumped awake but I didn’t know why. It was really hot when I went to bed and when I woke up David was getting into bed. He pulled the quilt up over us; I must have kicked it off.” Her face was red now. “I wear a T-shirt to bed—one of David’s. It comes down to here.” She gestured to her thighs. “When I woke up it was pulled up around my waist. I didn’t think anything of it; I never sleep well when it’s really hot, so I thought I must have been kicking around.”

I sat very still, suddenly terrified of what she’d say.

“The thing is, Gemma . . .” She stopped, then looked at the clock and started again, speaking faster this time. “I started to think about why I’d woken up. I couldn’t go back to sleep afterward; I never can if I wake up really quickly like that. And as I was lying there I was trying to think what had woken me. I hadn’t heard David in the bathroom; I can sleep through anything, normally, so even if he’d had a shower it wouldn’t disturb me.”

“Maybe you heard your bedroom door open?”

“It wasn’t closed. We never close it. No, it wasn’t that.”

“The bathroom door?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t that, either. It doesn’t click shut. And we leave the hall light on overnight, so it wasn’t as though I heard him switch that off, either.”

Outside the window a bus stopped and I saw Sophie get off and cross the road to go into the corner shop. She’d be here any minute. I could hardly complain about her being early, but I knew we needed more time.