Her with her middle-management job, her rental flat, her work friends, and her thirtieth birthday already a couple of years behind her.
It would be another four months before she sees inside his house and finds no second life. And she will be so impressed with his world, for a while. And for another six months, after that, they will be so happy, the stage seemingly set for their perfect future together.
It will be a dream, until it isn’t.
Until she wishes, more than anything, that she had told justonepersonthe name of the man she had been seeing, that she had told one person where she was going, where he lived, or about the fact thatsometimesher wonderful, handsome, funny, clever, incredibly successful boyfriend woke in the middle of the night screaming.
Chapter 17
A Clear Warning
After Pam is gone, Ilook down at the lumpy envelope in my hands.
Upstairs, I wedge it in between mortgage papers and insurance details in my filing cabinet. I notice she has written her name on the back of the packet in tiny, neatly spaced letters:Pam Howden.
I instantly Google her. Her LinkedIn fills the screen: she’s a retired GP, a former county rower, a local school trustee, and local wild-swim coordinator.
Trustworthy.
I pop my own keys in an envelope, jot a quick thank-you note to her for her kind offer, and head over to her house to post them through her letterbox.
I trust her. And the little, anxious voice in my head reassures me that even if she’s secretly a psychopath, I have an alarm. I could quite easily physically overpower her.
Package delivered, I head back to mine, and as I reopen my own front door, a message pings up on my phone.
I do not recognize the number, a random string of unmemorable digits. For a gut-wrenching second, I wonder if it might be from Ben, somehow, one final insult or indignity, but then I realize it’s not an international number.
My relief disappears as soon as I open the message and read.
Got your missing cat back then, I presume?!
I screenshotted your photo of him on the group, and yournumber. But I see you’ve now deleted them. Kindly stop filming my wife and me. Or we will contact the police.
I stare, horrified at the message. A shot of adrenaline shoots through me.
Whoever sent this could have seen me just now, going over to Pam’s. They could be watching from one of the windows. I slip back into my house, trying to show as little concern as I can. If it is Chris, Marina’s partner, he could well stride across the street at any moment and confront me. I quickly shut the door behind me.
In the cool of the hallway, I swallow hard and force myself to breathe.
I wait for the wave of panicky, jumbled thoughts to pass, then think the message through again. Who could it be? There is only a number, no photo or name. It could be anyone.
The message, I realize, can’t be from Chris. There is no way either of them saw Blue recording their argument; they didn’t even look in the direction of the camera. I would have seen them see us.
Unless Blue returned there today.
I sit down hard on the hall floor. Oh God, that sounds like the kind of thing Blue could have done. But I won’t be able to see what Blue has done until he gets home tonight. Then I recall the footage I was about to watch before Pam arrived, the video Blue recorded yesterday.
I bite my lip, then quickly block the number and delete the message. I definitely don’t want this person calling me.
And while the message is gone, the issue, I know, is still very much there, even if I can’t see it.
My phone instantly begins to vibrate in my hand, an incoming call. I drop it into my lap in horror. But it is a number my phone recognizes: a company I used to work with when I first started my career. I straighten instantly, pull myself together, and answer as if I weren’t sitting on my hall floor, my life in tatters.
“No, no. I totally understand.” I am beaming into the phone five minutes later. “Of course, and I appreciate you saying that, Melanie. No not at all, it’s fine. I’m looking into a few more opportunities. Yes. Great to catch up, though. Okay, bye.”
I hang up and stare into space, my soul absent from my body.
Okay,I conclude after a moment.On to the next.
