The Therapist(69)

I open the wardrobe to get some jeans and T-shirts and give a sigh of exasperation. Once again, some of my shoes have been pushed to one side and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by memories of me and Nina playing hide and seek in the cottage in Harlestone. There were plenty of places to hide but Nina would always choose one of the wardrobes, knowing I’d be too scared to open the door in case she jumped out at me. Sometimes I’d get Dad to help and we’d creep quietly to the wardrobe where I thought Nina was hiding and, when I opened the door, he would roar and scrabble among the clothes like a tiger, giving her an even bigger fright than she would have given me. Sometimes we chose the wrong wardrobe and we’d all end up in fits of giggles.

I blink away the tears that happy memories of my family always bring. I miss Nina, I miss my parents, I miss all the things we were never able to do together. And then, as I stand there in front of the wardrobe, it hits me. Someone, at some point, has hidden inside it.

Stunned, I sink onto the bed. It has to be Leo. The day I thought I saw him at the study window, I had smelt his aftershave in this bedroom. I’d thought he was hiding behind the bathroom door but he must have been in the wardrobe. He told me he wasn’t here, and Ginny had confirmed he was upstairs in the bedroom at hers when he phoned. Ginny wouldn’t lie to me so he must have sneaked out when she wasn’t looking, while Mark was playing golf with Ben. Why didn’t he want me to know he’d been here? I can’t get my head around it. It’s such a bizarre thing for a grown man to do, hide in a wardrobe. Would he even fit? It’s extra deep, with a good space between the door and the rail, so maybe he would.

I go over and step inside, then turn myself around so that I’m facing the bedroom, and close the doors. There’s plenty of room for me, plenty of room for Leo once he’d made enough room for his feet. And more importantly, if someone were to come into the bedroom now, I’d be able to see them through the slats in the doors. But they wouldn’t be able to see me.

I push open the doors and step back into the room, freaked out at the thought of Leo hiding in the wardrobe. All I want is to get out of the bedroom, out of the house. I reach up to the shelf above the rail where my jumpers are folded in a neat pile. The one that I want – navy, to match my jeans – is at the bottom of the pile. I put my hand under it to ease it from the shelf without disturbing the rest of the jumpers and my fingers brush against something soft, like fur. I cry out and instinctively pull my hand back, shuddering at the thought of what I might have touched, thinking a dead mouse or a giant spider. I wait for my heartrate to slow; I want to be able to lift the pile of jumpers so that I can see what’s lurking underneath, rather than pull the whole lot out, bringing whatever it is with them. The shelf is too high, so I fetch the chair from the corner of the room and place it in front of the wardrobe. I climb onto the chair and, steeling myself, carefully lift the jumpers.

A scream bursts from me and, losing my balance, I topple over the back of the chair, the jumpers flying from my hands as I crash to the floor. Horribly winded, I struggle to catch my breath, assessing myself for damage. My elbow and left leg are throbbing painfully and the back of my head doesn’t feel good either. I take a moment, then force myself to my feet, using the fallen chair to lever myself upright, ignoring the needles of pain shooting through my arm. Tears of fright spring to my eyes. I want to believe that I imagined the swathe of long blond hair that was hidden under the jumpers but I know that I didn’t. My mind spins with jumbled denials – it can’t be Nina’s hair, it can’t be, Leo didn’t know her, he didn’t kill her, he can’t have, he wouldn’t have – which collide with the facts – he wanted this house, this particular house – and reach a terrifying conclusion – he knew Nina, he killed her here in this house, he cut off her hair and kept some as a trophy. And now, he’s returned to the scene of the crime.

My fear that the hair is Nina’s is greater than any pain I’m experiencing. I reach for my mobile to phone the police, aware that I’m going to sound crazy. Maybe I am crazy, maybe it was my imagination, maybe it was something else I saw. Shaking, I inch nearer to the wardrobe, craning my neck towards the shelf. It’s still there, an amputated ponytail of long blond hair, tied top and bottom with red ribbon.

Except that Leo can’t have killed Nina. And while I’m going through all the reasons why Leo can’t be Nina’s murderer, my eyes still fixed on the hair, my mind is registering that there’s something not quite right about it. I move nearer for a closer look; the texture – unnaturally glossy – looks too perfect. I don’t want to touch it – but I need to know, so I reach out and run a tentative finger along it. And breathe a sigh of relief. The hair isn’t real, it’s synthetic.

I slump onto the bed. Why has Leo hidden a ponytail of synthetic hair in the wardrobe, which anyone seeing it – anyone who knows what happened to Nina here in this house – might mistake for her hair? Did he put it there to frighten me? Did he see me take the key from his wallet that day and decide to play a little game with me in retaliation?

A cold anger takes hold. I’m tempted to call the police and tell them I’ve found a ponytail of Nina’s in my wardrobe, tell them they should arrest my partner. But they’d come here first to check, and would see that it’s synthetic. Maybe I should call Leo and pretend that I’ve called the police, frighten him a little. But he would laugh at my na?vety, tell me it was just his little joke. I’m dismayed at how little I know him, dismayed that he could stoop so low. Furious, I send him a message. FYI, the hair is pathetic! He replies almost at once. I didn’t do it for you to like it.